We will have to start over.

Europe suffered, on the night of December 20 to 21, the failure of the first commercial flight of the new Vega-C rocket from Kourou, in French Guiana.

The European space program is thus deprived in the short term of an autonomous solution to launch its satellites, after the delay of Ariane 6 and the impossibility of using the Russian Soyuz rocket.

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Two minutes and 27 seconds after its takeoff on Tuesday at 10:47 p.m. local time, the trajectory of the small rocket deviated from that programmed, then the link was cut: the telemetry stopped arriving at the control room of the Kourou Space Center. 

Launched over the Atlantic Ocean, the rocket had just exceeded 100 km in altitude and was then just over 900 km north of Kourou. 

"The Mission is Lost"

The mission failed, the launcher lost and the two satellites destroyed: "The mission is lost," lamented Stéphane Israel, president of Arianespace, a company responsible for the operation and marketing of European launchers.

And Vega-C now risks being grounded until it understands the causes of the failure. 

An anomaly occurred on the second stage of the launcher, called Zefiro 40, Arianespace said in a press release.

"The Zefiro 40 turned on and operated normally for about 10 seconds. Then we observed a gradual deterioration of the trajectory shortly after," said Giulio Ranzo, the boss of Avio, industrial prime contractor for Vega- vs.

A "commission of inquiry will be set up" to determine the causes of the failure.

If the multiplication of the number of space launches in recent years, under the impetus in particular of the American SpaceX, tends to trivialize the exercise, the European failure is a reminder of the complexity of this undertaking.

"It's much more complicated than most people think," lamented Peter Beck, boss of the Rocket Lab mini-launcher.

Loss of two satellites

Vega-C was to place two Airbus Earth observation satellites, Pléiades Neo 5 and 6, into orbit, making it possible to image any point on the globe several times a day with a resolution of 30 cm.

Satellites providing commercial revenue are generally insured.

According to a connoisseur of the sector, Pléiades Neo 5 and 6 were covered up to 220 million euros by a consortium of insurers, allowing, if Airbus decides, to manufacture them again.

But the loss of these satellites is also bad news for the armies, particularly the French ones, customers of the high-resolution images provided by this constellation to monitor the situation in Ukraine in particular, while the French military observation satellite CSO-3 has not still could not be launched due to lack of availability of Soyuz and Ariane 6.

 Twenty-one launches, three failures

Initially scheduled for the end of November, this flight had been postponed for a month due to a defective element "related to the fairing", said Stéphane Israel, president of Arianespace.

A priori therefore unrelated to the failure of the night from Tuesday to Wednesday.

This was Vega-C's first commercial flight after its July 13 qualification launch.

Presented as the little sister of Ariane 6, the rocket uses certain common elements (the P120C main stage).

Vega-C is an upgraded version of the Vega lightweight launcher.

This is its third failure in 21 launches since 2012, when Ariane 5 has had only two in 115 launches since 1996 and Space X's Falcon 9 none, in 59 launches, since the start of the year.

For the European Space Agency (ESA), responsible for European launcher programs, this is yet another setback.

There are only two Ariane 5 left to launch.

The postponement to the end of 2023 of the inaugural flight of Ariane 6, initially scheduled for 2020, deprives Europeans of access to geostationary orbit, at an altitude of 36,000 km, and the ability to send the heaviest loads in the space. 

>> Space: Europe wants to give itself the means to stay in the race

And lack of access to the medium Russian Soyuz launcher, whose missions Arianespace marketed on behalf of international customers until February, ESA was thus forced to turn to SpaceX to launch two scientific missions.

With AFP

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