Two Airbus satellites are lost in space after Europe's Vega C rocket malfunctions
- The rocket known as Zefiro 40's second stage was the problem.
- Satellites Pléiades Neo 5 and Pléiades Neo 6 were being carried by the spacecraft.
- They were planned for sun-synchronous orbital delivery.
The Vega C rocket from Europe was lost in space just minutes after it was launched from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. Two satellites from the Airbus Pliades Neo Earth-imaging constellation were aboard the rocket, but it was unable to place them in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
At 10:47 p.m. local time, the medium-lift Vega C took off, and 2 minutes and 27 seconds into the flight, an anomaly was discovered. The second stage of the Zefiro 40 rocket, which failed to deliver the satellites, was the problem even though the first stage of the rocket successfully burned.
The Vega C mission was terminated approximately 2 minutes and 27 seconds after launch, according to a statement from Arianespace, which runs the Vega C rocket. However, it didn't go into great detail on the problem.
In order to comprehend the anomaly better, the team is currently doing data analysis. The Pliades Neo 5 and Pliades Neo 6 satellites, which together weigh 1977 kg and will complete the Airbus network of Neo Earth-imaging satellites, were being carried by the mission.
The constellation, which consists of four identical satellites designed with the most recent technology advancements from Airbus, enables multiple 30-cm-resolution images of any location on the world each day.
They can be given tasks up to 15 minutes before the acquisition and send the images back to Earth within the hour. They are extremely agile and responsive. The first two Pliades Neo satellites were launched by Arianespace in 2021 using two different Vega launchers. The Pliades Neo satellites 5 and 6 were launched by Arianespace as the 138th and 139th Airbus Defense and Space satellites, respectively.
The Pliades Neo constellation is able to cover the whole Earth landmass five times per year because of its imaging swath of 14 km, the widest in its class, and the satellites' unparalleled agility, the corporation claimed on the mission website for the launch.