Vega Booster Fails for Second Time in Three Launches
by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor
KOUROU, French Guiana — Europe’s Vega booster failed on Monday night for the second time in the last three launch attempts.
The flight of the solid-fuel rocket appeared to go nominally until the first of four planned burn of the AVUM fourth stage. At that point, the stage deviated from its planned trajectory.
“We can unfortunately confirm that the mission is lost,” Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël said after a tracking station failed to receive any signals from the AVUM stage or its two payloads.
Vega was carrying the SEOSat-Ingenio Earth observation satellite for the Spanish Center for Development of Industry Technology. Airbus Defense and Space built the spacecraft.
The other payload was the Taranis environmental satellite, which was designed to study the transfer of energy between Earth’s atmosphere and space above thunderstorms. The French space agency CNES developed the spacecraft.
Vega’s first three stages are made in Italy. The AVUM fourth stage that experienced the anomaly is produced in Ukraine.
Vega has a record of 15 successes and two failures since its maiden flight on Feb. 13, 2012. The first failure occurred during the 15th flight on July 11, 2019. An investigation determined the most likely cause was a thermo-structural failure in the forward dome area of the Z23 second stage motor.
Vega made a successful return to flight on Sept. 3, 2020, by launching 53 small satellites on its first rideshare mission.
8 responses to “Vega Booster Fails for Second Time in Three Launches”
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To be fair, being in essence an ICBM, sub-orbital trajectories are sort of in its wheelhouse.
Ha!
Maybe it’s time for ESA to start buying Falcon 9 flights from SpaceX. I am sure they could add a launch pad there fairly quickly.
Yes, Arianespace would be much more efficient if they split their manifest between F9/FH and Soyuz.
I think you mean ESA rather than Arianespace. As Soyuz is already in the process of being sunsetted by ESA, that would amount to an unconditional surrender by ESA to SpaceX. If ESA went that route, Arianespace would be the entity left standing when the music stopped.
No, Arianespace can be like ILS, a sales team that contracts other people’s stuff.
ILS used to handle bookings on Russian rockets. As almost no one seems to want to use Russian rockets anymore, ILS has very little to do.
I don’t think the launch bookers constitute much of the total current Arianespace payroll. If rocket production were to cease, Arianespace would be reduced to a corporal’s guard.
And without rockets of their own to book missions on, I don’t know what the Arianespace mission bookers would be offering by way of value-add. Big customers with big satellites already know how to deal direct with SpaceX. Smaller customers looking for rideshares can also deal direct with SpaceX now, or choose to go through one of the established aggregators/brokers like Spaceflight or Exolaunch.
Not going to happen, of course, but still fun to think about. But, should SpaceX ever be in the market for a near-equatorial launch site, I’m thinking the Brazilians would likely be a lot more welcoming at Alcantara than the Euros would be at Kourou.