On December 21, Arianespace's European Vega C rocket carrying two Airbus satellites crashed after several
What is known
Vega C launched from a spaceport in FranceGuiana at 03:47 (EET). After 2 minutes 27 seconds, due to a malfunction in the second stage, called Zefiro 40, the rocket fell. At the same time, the company said that the first stage, P120C, worked as normal.
Now Arianespace specialists are engaged ininvestigation of the incident in order to establish the causes of the accident. The rocket was to launch two Airbus satellites into orbit. Both spacecraft are lost in a crash.
Vega C is a 25m launch vehicledeveloped as an improved version of the Vega rocket, which made its first flight 10 years ago. As part of this mission, it was supposed to deliver the Airbus Pléiades Neo 5 and Pléiades Neo 6 satellites with a total mass of about 2 tons into a sun-synchronous orbit with a maximum payload of 2.3 tons.
The Vega C has only made one successful flight so far. So, in the middle of summer 2022, with its help, Arianespace sent six small cubesats and the Italian satellite LARES-2 into space.