Vega Flight VV01 - Lares & AlmaSat-1 & 7 cubesats - February 13, 2012

[jacqmans]

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMJ8LYXHYG_index_0.html

[spacejulien]

Actually, the de-orbit burn is still to be achieved. we are just a bit away from perfection. That burn is already programmed inside the on-board computer. If I well remember the flight software can also be programmed with a 4th burn (the 5th being the de-orbit) and I am not sure if they will be using this capability for some other tests.

According to the press release there won't be a de-orbit burn. The AVUM is in an orbit that will active re-entry in a few years and remaining fuel is vented but no specific re-entry burn will be preformed.

Yes, after deployment of LARES the third burn decreased the perigee from 1450 km to 350km. Then cubesat deployment. With this perigee reentry will occur far earlier than the required 25 years due to atmospheric friction.

[jacqmans]

Central and eastern Europe make history with small satellites

13 February 2012
The first satellites entirely designed and built by Hungary, Poland, Romania are now orbiting Earth after today’s successful maiden flight of ESA's small Vega launcher.

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMWHLWX7YG_index_0.html

[jacqmans]

Expanding Arianespace's launcher family: Vega completes its qualification mission
 
February 13, 2012 – Vega Flight VV01


The newest member for Arianespace’s launcher family – the lightweight Vega – successfully completed its qualification flight today from French Guiana to demonstrate the vehicle’s performance and payload services.
 
Lifting off from the Spaceport’s ZLV launch site, this no. 1 Vega deployed nine spacecraft into orbit.  It carried Italy’s LARES laser relativity satellite, the small ALMASat-1 technology microsatellite demonstrator from the University of Bologne, and seven CubeSats developed by more than 250 university students from six different countries.
 
Today’s flight was performed under responsibility of the European Space Agency, and its goal was to qualify the overall Vega system – including the vehicle, its ground infrastructure at the Spaceport, and operations from the launch campaign to payload deployment.
 
Vega was developed as a capable lightweight launcher to join Arianespace’s medium-lift Soyuz and heavyweight Ariane 5, providing it with a complete family of vehicles to meet the company’s motto of delivering “any payload, to any orbit…anytime.”
 
The Vega is powered by three solid propellant stages and a liquid-propellant fourth stage.  It was developed by the European Space Agency, Italy’s ASI space agency, and the French CNES space agency.  Production is handled in an industry team led by industrial prime contractor, ELV SpA. 

Vega’s flexibility enables varied payloads to be carried – from a single passenger to mixes of satellites, microsatellites and cubesats.  Its benchmark mission is for a 1,500 kg. payload lift performance into a 700 km.-altitude circular orbit.

http://www.arianespace.com/news-mission-update/2012/885.asp

[jacqmans]

Bravo Europe!!! Success of the first Vega launch: Historic success for space Europe
 
Kourou, February 13, 2012
 
Monday, 13 February 2012 at 10:00 Universal time saw the successful launch of the first Vega by the European Space Agency (ESA), putting 2 scientific satellites and 7 picosatellites into orbit. Thanks to this historic success, Arianespace now has the largest range of commercial launch services.
 
Vega, the new European launcher
 
Vega has been designed to launch payloads of up to 1 500 kg at an altitude of 700 km. This means that Europe now has a new vehicle to launch all its scientific and institutional missions. After the success of this maiden launch, Arianespace will be in charge of the commercialisation and exploitation of Vega.
 
With Ariane 5, Soyuz, and now Vega, all of which are operated from the Guiana Space Center, Arianespace is the only launch service and solutions company that can place any payload into any orbit: telecommunications satellites, scientific or Earth observation satellites, constellations and missions to the International Space Station.
 
A historic success
 
Following this historic success, Jean-Yves Le Gall, Chairman and CEO of Arianespace said: “Bravo Europe! Congratulations to the European Space Agency, to the Italian Space Agency, to the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales and to all our industrials partners. This success comes after 9 years of cooperative development. Well done Europe!”
 
Even before this first launch Arianespace and ESA had already signed the first commercial launch service and solutions contract, for the European Union launch of Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 spacecraft on Vega.
 
About Arianespace
 
Arianespace is the world’s leading launch service & solutions company, providing innovation to its customers since 1980. Backed by 21 shareholders and the European Space Agency, Arianespace offers an international workforce renowned for a culture of commitment and excellence. As of 13 February 2012, Arianespace had performed 204 Ariane launches (298 payloads), 26 Soyuz launches (24 at Baikonur with Starsem and 2 at the Guiana Space Center) and had prepared the first launch of Vega. It has a backlog of 23 Ariane 5, 15 Soyuz and 2 Vega launches, equal to more than three years of business.

http://www.arianespace.com/news-press-release/2012/2-13-2012.asp

[bolun]

Launch Replay: Vega qualification flight

[InvalidAttitude]

According the developers the MaSat-1 is working nominally.

Hopefully many more projects will come from this region of the world.

[dsky]

Actually, the de-orbit burn is still to be achieved. we are just a bit away from perfection. That burn is already programmed inside the on-board computer. If I well remember the flight software can also be programmed with a 4th burn (the 5th being the de-orbit) and I am not sure if they will be using this capability for some other tests.

According to the press release there won't be a de-orbit burn. The AVUM is in an orbit that will active re-entry in a few years and remaining fuel is vented but no specific re-entry burn will be preformed.

Yes, after deployment of LARES the third burn decreased the perigee from 1450 km to 350km. Then cubesat deployment. With this perigee reentry will occur far earlier than the required 25 years due to athmospheric friction.

I noted your objections. I am now forwarding a request to the development team for clarification on this. I would be surprised if they chose not to test that part of the flight software.

[dsky]

100% success on a maiden flight. Awesome! Well done ESA and Arianespace.

Yes, ok, ESA and Arianespace did their part. However I would like to mention those guys in Colleferro, near (but not enough for an easy commute) Rome, who did a good part of the grunt work, in a less than ideal location.

Many of "those engineers" came from the good old Alenia Spazio and they were used to work on satellites. They decided for a risky career change when they joined ELV SpA. And among them there are very many young engineers, lucky enough to find themselves in such an exciting project. They were recognized by Dordain at the end of his speech.

Just to understand, I was discussing with one of these guys. Remembering about common orbiting projects, he commented on being, for the first time, on the other side of the barricade. When doing satellites, you had to comply with launcher requirements. Now he was able to set those requirements for payloads. And when separation happens your job has finished, not started. A big change in your career! And a way to remember that all of them started on launchers basically from scratch to achieve the maximum success.

By the way, prof. Volker Liebig, ESA/ESRIN center director, told us that the talk in Italian that Dordain made during the post-launch celebration was his payment for a bet. He said that when Vega would launch he would speak Italian: he was honoring is part of the deal.

[arkaska]

I noted your objections. I am now forwarding a request to the development team for clarification on this. I would be surprised if they chose not to test that part of the flight software.

If it do have the capability to re-enter then I'm surprised as well that they didn't do it. However I'm no expert and only when by what the press release stated.

[Nahavandi]

Congratulations to ESA , Arianespace and all the participating sat-teams , this is a great achievement .

[simonbp]

Awesome, great to have new launcher in the world's fleet.

[tehwkd]

full coverage:

[jcm]

Actually, the de-orbit burn is still to be achieved. we are just a bit away from perfection. That burn is already programmed inside the on-board computer. If I well remember the flight software can also be programmed with a 4th burn (the 5th being the de-orbit) and I am not sure if they will be using this capability for some other tests.

According to the press release there won't be a de-orbit burn. The AVUM is in an orbit that will active re-entry in a few years and remaining fuel is vented but no specific re-entry burn will be preformed.

Yes, after deployment of LARES the third burn decreased the perigee from 1450 km to 350km. Then cubesat deployment. With this perigee reentry will occur far earlier than the required 25 years due to athmospheric friction.

I noted your objections. I am now forwarding a request to the development team for clarification on this. I would be surprised if they chose not to test that part of the flight software.

Now three objects cataloged - B is 315 x 1441 km, C is 307 x 1442 km,
and A is a little lower at 274 x 1427 km
So it may be that AVUM was vented in such a way to lower the perigee by a further 30 km or so from ~310 km to 274 km.

Still haven't found any data on the AVUM initial perigee/apogee (at Z9A separation) so if you talk to the team maybe you can ask them that too?

[jcm]

LARES has now been cataloged, together with the right number of objects (9) in the lower orbit. It will of course take a while for STRATCOM to figure out which object is which. Objects are 38077 - 38086 in the catalog, for those interested.

[dsky]

I noted your objections. I am now forwarding a request to the development team for clarification on this. I would be surprised if they chose not to test that part of the flight software.

If it do have the capability to re-enter then I'm surprised as well that they didn't do it. However I'm no expert and only when by what the press release stated.

I am still waiting for a reply to my question. But I can tell you with very good reliability that VEGA's OBC Flight Software can schedule 5 burns of the AVUM engine, the last being typically reserved for a de-orbit.
Basically the 5th burn is always programmed as a de-orbit and involves the required re-orientation for the burn and, after the deceleration is achieved, is followed by the the passivation of the Attitude Control System.
This does not mean they are using it for this flight, though. I am try to shed some light about this.

[dsky]

I hope somebody is still interested in this.

Anyway, after checking, here is some interesting stuff.

The AVUM has not been programmed to perform the 4th and 5th burns and will de-orbit naturally as presumed from the press-kit. The de-orbit burn, while available for future missions, will be discussed on a case by case basis according also to related space laws under discussion in ESA about the explicit de-orbit of spent stages.

There were 4 cameras on VV-01 to precisely record visually
- 1st stage sep (from interstage and AVUM, down looking)
- other stages separation (from AVUM, down looking)
- fairing and LARES releases (from AVUM, up looking)

Videos will be made available next week. I can't wait for them and I guess it is better for Chris to unleash some of his good sources for this.

The solid stages outperformed specifications and the first AVUM burn had a significant underburn to compensate the excess speed at 3rd stage cutoff.

---

Instead, from another good source in Kourou at the time of the launch, it has been reported that LARES release was going to be considered good if within 20Km of altitude. It appears that the release happened within a few METERS of the target altitude.

I think that "very accurate" should be an adjective to be added to Vega basic credentials.

All this feels very good! Congratulation once more to the ELV guys for the outstanding job accomplished.

[catfry]

I hope somebody is still interested in this.

I think you can safely assume there will always be interest in new info, even if no one replies. I for one am reading with interest.

[edfishel]

me too 

[mdo]

Dito. Thanks, dsky.

And for anyone else who cares:
Purely based on numbers shown during the webcast I estimated a 3rd stage orbit of -30 x 775 km (?) Also, the velocity peaked around T+1:40, 3:12 and 5:31 for each of the three solid stages. Thrust levels dropped sharply around these points in time and the vehicle - not surprisingly - appeared to be coasting towards the separation events while trading speed for altitude.