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After only eight minutes, the European rocket is embarrassed
| Reading time: 3 minutes
After eight minutes there were problems: the most recent Vega mission on Tuesday night, here a start in August 2018, failed
Quelle: alliance of images / dpa
Another European Vega rocket fails shortly after its launch into space. Elon Musk’s SpaceX astronaut mission, on the other hand, is running smoothly. Now Europe’s space travel fears a dangerous domino effect.
meEurope’s rockets are becoming less and less reliable, while the private American company SpaceX presents the world with modern manned spaceflight. At about the same time, another mission by the European unmanned Vega rocket failed Tuesday night, and the Americans easily transported four people to the ISS space station.
The Vega was launched from the European spaceport in French Guiana in South America and was supposed to put into orbit a Spanish surveillance satellite (“Seosat-Ingenio”) and a French science satellite (“Taranis”).
But after a good eight minutes of flight there were problems with the fourth stage, which is powered by a re-ignited Ukrainian engine (Avum). The satellites missed their intended trajectory and likely burned heavily as they entered denser layers of air.
A few hours after the missile failed, human error and poor quality control emerged as the cause of the accident. As Roland Lagier, technical director at rocket marketer Arianespace, said, the upper tier began to wobble after the engine was fired. The cables of two thrust control units were probably interchanged.
Customers could jump
Stéphane Israël, director of the European rocket marketing company Arianespace, had no choice but to admit failure.
Instead, the commands of one adjustment mechanism were executed by the other. “This was clearly a production and quality problem, a series of human errors and not a design problem,” Lagier said. The main contractor for the construction of the Vega rocket is the listed Italian group Avio with a turnover of almost 370 million euros and 1,000 employees. Avio’s share price collapsed by 16 percent on Tuesday. The engine for the fourth stage of the rocket is supplied by two Ukrainian companies.
It is Vega’s second disaster in the last three launches of the previously reliable 30-meter-high rocket. In July 2019, a flight with the “Falcon Eye” spy satellite for the United Arab Emirates failed for the first time after 15 launches. The mission was insured for $ 415 million and is being recreated. As they say, the Emirates no longer want to use the Vega in the future, but rather a Russian Soyuz rocket.
The Vega’s new flaw can set off a ripple effect: Customers could jump and insurance premiums could rise.
The Vega ruling is also painful for Europe’s space travel, because more and more smaller satellites are being built. You also only need smaller launch vehicles like the Vega. This type of rocket is the small cargo transporter of the European space agency Esa. The so-called micro-launchers, which are currently being developed across Europe by startups, are sufficient for very small satellites.
An investigative commission is once again active to determine the cause of Vega’s ruling. The now-failed Vega variant should be replaced by a more modern version (Vega C), which was planned for 2021. This could possibly be delayed.
One of the special features of the rocket, which was built mainly in Italy, is that the first three stages have a solid fuel propulsion system. Only the fourth stage runs on highly toxic liquid fuel.
But the Vega is not the only problem for European space travelers. With big rockets like the Ariane, Europeans are already struggling with delays in the new version of the Ariane 6, as well as cost increases.
American competitor SpaceX is taking more and more commercial customers from Europeans with its trusty Falcon rocket. The space company founded by Elon Musk can also score with low prices because the rockets are reusable and SpaceX has money in its ATM thanks to huge contracts from the US government.
So far, the manned mission of the SpaceX capsule “Crew Dragon” with four people has gone smoothly. After a 27-hour flight, the reusable capsule docked at the ISS space station. The flight back to Earth is scheduled in about half a year. It is the second manned flight of a Dragon capsule after an initial test mission with two astronauts in May.
