The return to flight of the Vega-C rocket will have to wait at least one more day. The announcement, from Arianespace, the company managing the mission, came less than a week ahead of the planned launch.
The mission, which is referred to as VV25, will see the launch of the Sentinel-1C spacecraft to a Sun-synchronous Earth orbit. The last time a Vega-C launched was on Dec. 20, 2022, which ended in failure due to an anomaly on the upper stage.
Stéphane Israël, the CEO of Arianespace, the company overseeing the launch operations, confirmed the one day slip during a prelaunch briefing on Wednesday.
“We will have a very limited postponement of the mission due to additional checks and certification on the launcher. We will push, hopefully by one day, the mission,” Israël said. “We will confirm to you on Friday that it is limited to one day, but this is, today, I would say, our baseline expectation.”
“As an integrated team across Arianespace, ESA, Avionics and so on, we deem (it) appropriate to conduct further checks and further activities to provide even better flight worthiness to the launch,” said Giulio Ranzo, the CEO of Avio, the company that will take over managing Vega-C launches beginning with the VV29 mission. “It is something we typically do in a culture of doubt that where we see something we are not completely satisfied with, we’d love to intervene and conduct more checks.
“And I think it is important, as a policy we have in Europe, to ensure the maximum flight worthiness, that we do so, in particular for this very relevant flight in full transparency, by the way, with the customer. That is very important.”
Return to flight
The nearly two-year gap between the last flight of a Vega-C rocket and the forthcoming one has been filled with a series of tests to validate the corrective actions taken on the upper stage.
Those included a pair of hot fire tests of Avio’s Zefiro-40 engine, the most recent of which took place on Oct. 3, 2024.
🔊Sound on (but it’s very loud)…
Hear the mighty power of @Avio_Group‘s Zefiro-40 during testing. In just two minutes this rocket stage burns through 36000 kg of propellant!
See it fire into action live next week on the Vega-C launch as it helps propel #Sentinel1-C to orbit 🚀 pic.twitter.com/ggVxjVEme5— ESA Space Transport (@ESA_transport) November 26, 2024
“The launcher is currently completely integrated, has conducted all of these tests for the readiness to the launch,” Ranzo said. “We will continue performing some checks and operational activities over the next few days and prior to launch, we will execute the launch readiness review, as we normally do, in cooperation with Arianespace, with the European Space Agency, with the French Space Agency (CNES) and with the customer.”
The roughly 2.3 ton Sentinel-1C spacecraft will be placed into its intended orbit at about 700 km (435 mi) above the Earth’s surface at an inclination of 98.19 degrees. It will separate from the Vega-C’s upper stage about 1 hour and 43 minutes after launch and is designed to have a lifespan of 7.25 to 10 years.
The spacecraft is the sixth satellite that’s part of the Copernicus program to be launched by Arianespace. Copernicus is described by ESA as “the Earth observation component of the European Union’s space program,” which “provides continuous, free and reliable Earth observation data and services to public authorities, companies and citizens around the globe.”
The program is managed by the European Commission and funded by the European Union.
“Just to give you some figures, each month, more than 150,000 products based on Sentinel-1 data are published and made available to users and since the beginning of the operations of the Sentinel-1, we have generated over 30 petabytes of data and more than 14 million products were made available,” said Christoph Kautz, the Director for Satellite Navigation and Earth Observation for the European Commission.
“So, it’s really a very important mission for us and overall I can say that if you look also into the future, and you look at market forecasts, you will see that the overall revenues of the global Earth observation data and value added service market are projected to reach several billions of Euros. So economically, clearly, it’s a very important mission for us.”
Future of Vega-C
Starting in 2025, Israël said he anticipated an annual launch cadence of four Vega-C flights per year, which will begin with the launch of a P-band synthetic aperture radar satellite called Biomass.
Ranzo said the European member states are pushing for a plan that would “increase the production capacity all the way up to approximately six launches per year.” He said it would take about 2.5 years to reach that point.
“This will require that we put in operation a so-called ‘launcher pre-integration building’ that will enable us to integrate the launcher, not on the launch pad, but on a nearby facility that was formally used by Ariane 5,” Ranzo said. “So, while we will be launching one launcher on the pad, in parallel, we’ll be already preparing the next launcher for launch.”
