KOUROU: Europe’s new Vega-C rocket was lost shortly after lift-off from French Guiana overnight with two satellites on board, in the latest blow to European space efforts.

The launch failure on Tuesday night threatens to ground the Vega-C, which would leave Europe without a short-term way to send satellites into orbit after delays to the Ariane 6 rocket and cancelled Russian cooperation over the Ukraine war.

If it had been successful, it would have been the first commercial launch of the Vega-C since its inaugural flight on July 13.

But just minutes after lift-off on Wednesday, the launcher’s trajectory deviated from its programmed route and communications were lost, according to commercial launch service provider Arianespace.

“The mission is lost,” Arianespace chief executive Stephane Israel said from the Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana, a French department on South America’s northeast coast. An “anomaly occurred” in the second stage of the launcher, “ending the Vega-C mission”, the company said. The rocket was launched over the Atlantic Ocean and had shot past 100 kilometres altitude and was more than 900 kilometres north of Kourou.

It was not immediately clear whether the rocket’s destruction device was activated or whether it crashed into the sea. “Data analysis is under way to determine the reasons for this failure,” it added. A press briefing is scheduled for noon on Wednesday in Kourou.

Launches of Europe’s new Vega-C rocket will be suspended while an inquiry is held into what caused the failure of its first commercial flight overnight, French firm Arianespace said on Wednesday.

Co-led by the European Space Agency and the French aerospace company, the “independent” commission, aims to find out “the cause of the failure and to propose robust and long-lasting corrective actions to guarantee a safe and reliable return to flight of Vega-C,” Arianespace chief executive Stephane Israel told a press conference.

Published in Dawn, December 22nd, 2022