European Space Agency’s Vega launch vehicle successfully completed its second launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, o...
European Space Agency’s Vega launch vehicle successfully completed its second launch from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, orbiting three satellites.
Two Earth observation satellites, ESA’s Proba-V and Vietnam’s VNREDSat‑1A, Estonia’s first satellite, the ESTCube‑1 technology demonstrator, were released into orbit.
Vega lifted off at 02:06 GMT on 7 May (23:06 localtime 6 May; 04:06 CEST 7 May).
The mission required five upper-stage boosts and lasting about twice as long as its first launch, in February 2012.
The three solid-propellant stages performed flawlessly and, after two burns of the liquid-propellant upper stage, Proba‑V was released into a circular orbit at an altitude of 820 km, over the western coast of Australia, some 55 minutes into flight.
The satellite is now being controlled by ESA’s centre in Redu, Belgium, where it is undergoing a health check and testing before the operational phase starts to monitor the vegetation coverage on Planet Earth.
After releasing Proba-V, the upper stage performed a third burn and the top half of the egg-shaped Vega Secondary Payload Adapter was ejected. After a fourth burn to circularise the orbit at an altitude of 704 km, VNREDSat-1A was released 1 hour 57 minutes into flight. ESTCube‑1was ejected from its dispenser three minutes later.
A fifth and last burn will now place the spent upper stage on a trajectory that ensures a safe reentry that complies with new debris mitigation regulations.
The flight was conducted under the Vega Research and Technology Accompaniment programme (VERTA) that aims at demonstrating the versatility of the launch system.
It also marked the start of the transition from ESA to Arianespace as launch operator. Arianespace provided flight analysis, preparation and operations, and the marketing that secured VNREDSat‑1A as Vega’s first commercial payload.
This second mission demonstrated Vega’s capability to launch multiple satellite stacks with the new VESPA multiple launch adapter, as well as its overall flexibility.
The Proba‑V primary payload is a 138,2 kg satellite built by Qinetiq Space Belgium.
Proba‑V is based on the platform flown on two previous ESA missions and carries the Vegetation imager to map global vegetation cover every twodays, as a follow-on to the first generation of Vegetation imagers on France’s Spot-4 and -5 satellites.
Proba-V is flying in the same orbit as Spot-5 in order to take over from the ageing satellite on its retirement next year. Vegetation is a high-technology optical imager designed to provide 350 m-resolution imagery in four visible and infrared bands with an impressive 2250 km swath width that will allow daily coverage of all areas within 35–75ºN and 35–56ºS. These data will be processed and provided to a wide community of international users, including the European Commission.
In addition to this primary payload, Proba also hosts a series of technology payloads such as a receiver to detect aircraft in flight around the globe, a communications amplifier based on the latest gallium nitride technology, a novel pair of radiation monitors and a photonics experiment testing fibre optics for space.
VNREDSat-1A (Vietnam Natural Resources, Environment, Disaster Satellite) is a 115,3 kg commercial remote sensing satellite built by Astrium for Vietnam’s Academy of Sciences and Technologies. Its launch was contracted through Arianespace in January.
ESTCube-1 is Estonia’s first satellite. This 1.3 kg CubeSat was designed and built by students from the University of Tartu with a contribution from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. It will deploy a 10 m-long tether to demonstrate electrostatic manoeuvring through the plasma flow, which could lead to electrostatic solar sails for propellantless interplanetary travel.
The VERTA programme covers a batch of five missions to demonstrate the flexibility of the system, promoting the smooth introduction of the vehicle for commercial exploitation.
Vega can launch payloads of upto 1.5 tonne into low polar orbits at altitudes of 300–1500 km.With a length of 30 m and a diameter of 3 m, it has three solid-propellant stages (P80, Zefiro-23 and Zefiro-9) and a liquid-propellant stage (AVUM: Attitude and Vernier Upper Module). Unlike most small launchers, it is able to place multiple payloads in orbit.
Seven ESA Member States (Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden) are contributing to the Vega programme.
The industrial prime contractor is ELVSpA, 70% of which is owned by Avio SpA and 30% by Italy’s ASI space agency.
The flight manifest for Vega is currently: Kazakhstan’s DZZ-HR high-resolution remote sensing satellite (2014), the Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle reentry demonstrator (2014), the LISA Pathfinder mission to demonstrate the technologies for the future Laser Interferometer Space Antenna gravity-wave detection mission (2015), and the Aeolus satellite to map Earth’s wind profiles (2015).
