Arianespace has used \u2014 with Russia\u2019s support \u2014 a Soyuz ST-A rocket to launch a joint military and civilian Earth imaging satellite for the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces from the Guiana Space Centre near Kourou, French Guiana.<\/p>\n
Liftoff of the Falcon Eye 2 satellite occurred at 20:33:28 EST on Tuesday, 1 December (01:33:28 UTC on Wednesday, 2 December) to ensure the satellite reached the proper sun-synchronous orbit at a mean altitude of 611 km.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The mission was originally scheduled to launch on a Vega rocket, like its predecessor \u2014 Falcon Eye 1 \u2014 did in July 2019. That mission ended abruptly 14 seconds after stage two ignition when the Vega rocket suffered the first of its two failures to-date.<\/p>\n
Shortly after separation of the launcher\u2019s first and second solid propellant stages, the forward dome on the Z23 motor (second stage) suffered a \u201cthermo-structural failure\u201d leading to a \u201cviolent event\u201d that \u201cled to a breakup of the launcher\u201d \u2014 an engineering way of saying that the thermal protection system at the top of the Z23 stage failed, causing the destruction of the rocket and payload.<\/p>\n
Following the failure, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Armed Forces asked for Falcon Eye 2\u2019s launch to be changed to a Soyuz rocket with a Fregat-M upper stage so as not to launch on Vega again and allow for a smoother and more timely launch not subject to Vega\u2019s return timeline.<\/p>\n
Launch was rescheduled for 20 February 2020 before moving to 5 March. That day, teams found an issue with \u201cone of the liquid propellant small thrust engines\u201d on the Fregat-M upper stage of the Soyuz during day-of-launch checkouts. Later reports indicated the issue was a leak of oxidizer.<\/p>\n