Vega for ESA: the story
Vega joined the family of launch vehicles at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana in 2012. At 30-m tall the rocket weighs 137 tonnes on the launch pad and reaches orbit with three solid-propellant powered stages before the fourth liquid-propellant stage takes over. By rocket standards Vega is lightweight and powerful, the first three stages burn through their fuel and bringing Vega and its satellites to space in just six minutes.
Specialising in launches of small satellites to orbits flying over Earth’s poles, Vega has an impressive roster of missions that it has sent to space. Flagship ESA missions that flew Vega include technology demonstrator and Earth vegetation watcher Proba-V and wind-monitoring satellite Aeolus. Vega’s heaviest payload launched was the 1906-kg LISA Pathfinder, a forerunner to LISA that will measure gravitational waves in space..
In 2015 Vega launched three ESA missions in one year, including reentry demonstrator IXV that showed Europe has the technology to launch a vehicle to space and return it safely to Earth. In less than two hours Vega accelerated IXV to speeds of 27 000 km/h at a height of 412 km before the reentry vehicle splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. This demonstration mission was a precursor to the reuseable Space Rider spacecraft that will offer regular access to space for research and in orbit validation and demonstration missions and is paired with the Vega family of launchers.
With its Vespa secondary payload adapter, first launched in 2013 on Vega’s second flight, Vega offered different options for payload ride-sharing where multiple satellites are launched on one rocket. In 2020 a variant of Vespa called the Small Spacecraft Mission Service transported over 50 satellites at once to orbit.
Sentinel-2C is the last payload that the Vega rocket launches into space – after 12 years of service. Fittingly the Sentinel-2A and Sentinel-2B satellites were launched on Vega marking a logical conclusion to Vega’s stellar roster of satellites launched.