Illustration of Europe’s Vega C rocket, which failed to leave Earth on its second flight on Tuesday. Photo by Arianespace/UPI
Dec. 21 (UPI) — Europe’s new medium-lift Vega C rocket suffered a failure on its second voyage into space late Tuesday after takeoff from Kourou, French Guiana spaceport, officials said.
The rocket’s solid-fueled P120C first stage booster burned for nearly two-and-a-half minutes and produced the thrust needed to accelerate the rocket into the upper atmosphere but problems occurred with the second stage, called the Zefiro 40.
“Approximately 2 minutes and 27 seconds after liftoff an anomaly occurred on the Zefiro 40, thus ending the Vega C mission,” Arianespace, the French company that operates the Vega C, said in a statement. “Data analyses are in progress to determine the reasons of this failure.”
The Italian aerospace company Avio produced the Zefiro 40 second stage. It was designed to burn its supply of 40 tons of pre-packed solid propellant in about 90 seconds.
The Pleiades Neo 5 and Neo 6 satellites were lost as a result of the crash.
“I want to deeply apologize to our customer, Pleiades Neo and Airbus Defense and Space, for this failure tonight,” Stephane Israel, Arianespace’s CEO said. “And we will now have to work with all our partners to better understand why the Zefiro 40 has not worked properly tonight, triggering the failure of the mission.”
The satellites were expected to launch into a sun-synchronous orbit to complete a constellation made of four identical satellites. Once in position, they would have been able to use the latest Airbus innovations and technological developments to image any point of the globe, several times per day.
“Highly agile and reactive, they can be tasked up to 15 minutes before acquisition and send the images back to Earth within the following hour,” Arianespace said about the constellation.
