Tag: Avio

Arianespace successfully completes the last launch of Avio’s Vega rocket

9:29 pm

Tonight the last launch of the Vega rocket, built by the Italian company Avio and managed by Arianespace, successfully lifted off from French Guiana, placing a European Earth observation satellite into orbit.

The launch was delayed several years because of a failure during a previous launch that required a major redesign of an engine. Further delays took place when Avio literally lost the tanks for the rocket’s upper stage, and had to improvise a solution (which has never been explained fully).

The rocket will now be replaced by the Vega-C, which after several more launches will be entirely owned and managed by Avio, which will market it to satellite customers without any significant participation of the government middleman Arianespace.

This was only the second launch by Europe in 2024, so the leader board of the 2024 launch race does not change.

86 SpaceX
37 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 101 to 56, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 86 to 71.

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Arianespace finally schedules last Vega launch

9:04 am

After improvising an upper stage fix because the rocket’s Italian manufacturer, Avio, literally lost the stage’s tanks, Arianespace on July 31, 2024 finally scheduled the last Vega rocket launch, targeting a September 3, 2024 lift off from French Guiana.

The change to the upper stage was required after the company managed to lose two of its four propellant tanks. As the production line for the AVUM upper stage tanks had been shut down in anticipation of the rocket’s retirement, Avio was forced to find a way to instead utilize the larger propellant tanks from the Vega C AVUM+ upper stage. With this process now complete, the company has a clear path toward the rocket’s swan song.

This rocket has been replaced by the more powerful Vega-C. Control and ownership on future launches has also been shifted from Arianespace back to Avio as part of Europe’s transition from using a government-run launch monopoly (Ariancespace) to relying on multiple competitive and independent private companies.

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ESA approves taking the Vega-C rocket away from Arianespace

9:12 am

The council that runs the European Space Agency (ESA) today approved a resolution that shifted ownership of the Vega-C rocket away from government-run Arianespace and giving it back to its builder, the Italian aerospace company Avio.

Arianespace and Avio have agreed that Arianespace will remain the launch service provider and operator for Vega and Vega-C launch services until Vega flight 29 (VV29), scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2025. For Vega-C launches following VV29, the customers who have already contracted with Arianespace will be offered the possibility to transfer their contracts to Avio as the new launch service provider and sole operator of Vega.

Arianespace will primarily focus with ArianeGroup on the Ariane 6 exploitation to best meet the customer needs.

The council also agreed with France’s plan to allow independent commercial rocket startups to launch from French Guiana. Control of that spaceport has also been taken from Arianespace and returned to its owner, the French space agency CNES.

Essentially, this decision ties Arianespace’s future to Ariane-6, which is likely to disappear once its present manifest of launches, mostly for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation, gets launched.

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Payload for the last launch of Avio’s Vega rocket now heading to French Guiana

9:44 am

While it remains unclear when the launch will occur, the two-satellite payload for the last launch of Europe’s Vega rocket is now heading to French Guiana.

The payload is two satellites that will be placed in orbits 180 degrees apart in order to make it possible to make fast repeat coverage of the Earth.

This particular launch is long delayed, for several reasons, one of which has been extremely embarrassing for Avio, the Italian company that builds the Vega family of rockets.

In December 2023, European Spaceflight reported that Avio had lost two of four propellant tanks required for the upper stage of the rocket’s final flight. The tanks were later found crushed, forcing the company to find an alternative. At the time, it proposed either using test articles of the tanks that had been used during the vehicle’s qualification phase in 2012 or modifying Vega C upper stage propellant tanks. It’s not clear which of the two options Avio selected to pursue.

The lack of any announced launch date suggests Avio might still have not come up with a solution, or if it has, the solution is not yet fully implemented.

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Avio completes static fire test of the upper stage of its grounded Vega-C rocket

9:03 am

The Italian company Avio yesterday completed a full static fire test of the solid-fueled upper stage of its grounded Vega-C rocket, proving that the second redesign of its nozzle now works.

The initial post-test review indicates that the new nozzle assembly performed as expected throughout the scheduled 94 seconds burning time of the test, simulating a nominal in-flight performance.

The Zefiro-40 is a 7.6 m tall rocket motor, loaded with over 36 tonnes of solid propellant. For this test the motor was installed on its horizontal test bench. Zefiro-40 is developed and manufactured by Avio in their Colleferro factory near Rome, Italy.

A second firing-test will be conducted after the summer to confirm the data collected today. Avio engineers will review the data from the first test to prepare for a second test in October that will then qualify the second stage Zefiro-40 solid rocket motor for a return-to-flight by end 2024 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

The nozzle — originally built in the Ukraine — had failed during a launch in December 2022. Then Avio’s first redesign failed in a ground test in July 2023.

With this launch, the Vega-C is poised to resume operations by the end of the year. Those operations will be different however in one major respect. While previously the rocket was built by Avio but owned and controlled by the European Space Agency’s commercial arm, Arianespace, its ownership has been transferred back to Avio. Arianespace is now merely a “launch service provider” according to the press release. I suspect this means that Arianespace handles the launch in French Guiana, something that will also soon be taken from it because control of that spaceport is also being returned to the French space agency CNES.

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A French rocket startup enters the competition

9:35 am

A new French rocket startup, Hyprspace, has assembled the engine and body of a first stage demonstrator, dubbed Terminator, to be used to test that new engine in preparation for the first suborbital test launch.

On 4 May 2024, the company shared the first glimpse of the Terminator demonstrator at its facility in Le Haillan, France. According to the update, teams had worked through double shifts over a three-week period to prepare the demonstrator for its test firing. The test will be conducted at a Direction générale de l’armement missile test facility in Gironde, France. HyPrSpace has not yet revealed when the test is expected to take place.

This engine will eventually be used in the company’s planned orbital Baguette-1 rocket for launching smallsats.

We now have at least five European rocket startups, three in Germany (Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar, Hyimpulse), one in Spain (PLD), and one in France (Hyprspace). We also have Avio in Italy taking over ownership from Arianespace of its Vega family of rockets. That company is about to begin static fire testing a Vega-C upper stage, its engine nozzle completely redesigned following a launch failure. It hopes to resume flying by the end of the year.

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ESA is taking the Vega rockets away from Arianespace and giving it to the company that builds it

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) is in the process of taking control of the Vega family of rockets away from its commercial arm, Arianespace, and returning that ownership to the Italian company, Avio, that builds those rockets.

In late 2023, ESA member states agreed to allow Avio to market and manage the launch of Vega C flights independent of Arianespace. When the deal was initially struck, 17 flights were contracted through Arianespace to be launched aboard Vega vehicles. While these missions are still managed by Arianespace, Avio is working with the launch provider to strike a deal that would allow the Italian rocket builder to assume the management of all Vega flights.

The article’s focus is on a new contract that ESA has just awarded to Vega through Arianespace. noting that this contract will likely be shifted to Avio before launch in 2025.

This decision continues the process of slowly killing off Arianespace. Instead of relying on this government entity to build and market its launch operations, ESA is instead going to become a customer only, relying on competing commercial rocket companies for its launch services. When Avio completes its takeover of Vega, Arianespace will only be responsible for the Ariane-6 rocket, which is built by ArianeGroup and essentially owns it as well. Expect that rocket to be shifted completely to ArianeGroup. At that point Arianespace will no longer have any reason for existing, and will be shut down.

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Italian subcontractor for Arianespace misplaces two rocket tanks

8:58 am

This story is hard to believe but true: The Italian company Avio, one of the subcontractors for Arianespace that builds its smaller rockets Vega and Vega-C, apparently misplaced two rocket tanks that were to be used on the Vega rocket’s last launch, thus preventing that launch entirely.

The two propellant tanks that went missing were housed in an Avio production department in Colleferro that had undergone renovation work. At some point following the completion of the renovations, the two tanks were found to be missing.

According to the initial source, the tanks had not been entered into a company-wide asset management system that tracked the location of all vital Avio components. This ensured that the teams tasked with investigating the disappearance had very little to go on when beginning their search for the missing tanks.

Despite the futility of the search, the tanks were eventually found. This was, however, not the good news Avio had hoped for. The tanks are, unfortunately, not in a usable state. They had been crushed and were found alongside metal scraps in a landfill.

The tanks power Vega’s fourth stage that deploys satellites in orbit. They were to be used on the final flight of Vega, which has been delayed repeatedly for unexplained reasons. We now know the reason.

Because this was the final flight, however, the tanks cannot be replaced because the Vega production line has been shut down. The company is considering using two of the four qualification tanks first built more than a decade ago when Vega was first being tested, but those were test tanks and have been sitting unused for as long. It will be difficult to determine their reliability.

Europe’s government-run rocket program thus at present has no rocket capable of launching. Its Ariane-5 is retired. Its Vega cannot launch. Its Vega-C, which replaces the Vega, remains grounded due to a launch failure in December 2022, with the next launch expected no earlier than late in 2024. And its new Ariane-6 rocket won’t do its first launch until the summer of 2024, at the earliest.

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Italy awards $256 million contract for testing in-orbit robotic satellite servicing

8:59 am

The new colonial movement: The Italian Space Agency yesterday issued a $256 million contract to a partnership of several private European companies — most of which are Italian — to fly a mission testing a variety of in-orbit robotic satellite servicing capabilities.

Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales of France and Leonardo of Italy, said the group is contracted to design, develop, and qualify a spacecraft capable of performing a range of autonomous robotic operations on satellites in low Earth orbit.

The company did not disclose details about these satellites or specifics about the mission, but said the servicer would have a dexterous robotic arm and test capabilities that include refueling, component repair or replacement, orbital transfer, and atmospheric reentry. The servicer will be launched with a target satellite, Thales Alenia Space spokesperson Cinzia Marcanio said, and both will be fitted with an interface for a refueling mission.

The partnership also includes the Italian companies Telespazio, Avio, and D-Orbit.

The significance of this deal is that Italy has gone outside the European Space Agency (ESA) to do it. For decades all European projects would be developed and flown through ESA. Italy appears to be have finally realized that it does not need that partnership, that in fact that partnership acts to hinder its own companies by requiring any mission to use companies from other nations. This deal instead keeps almost everything inside Italy.

We have seen a similar pattern in both Germany and the United Kingdom. The former has been working to encourage private German rocket companies, independent of ESA. The latter is doing the same in the UK, while also encouraging private British spaceports to launch those rockets.

These efforts strongly suggest that ESA’s monumental failure with the Ariane-6 — which is years late and will cost too much to fly — has been causing its member nations to rethink that partnership, and increasingly go it alone. ESA failed to provide them a competitive alternative for getting their payloads into orbit. They are now looking for ways to do it themselves.

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Italy funds development by Avio of smallsat rocket and methane engine

10:13 am

In a move that might eventually separate Italy from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Arianespace commercial division, the Italian government on March 13, 2023 announced that it has committed $308 million to the Italian company Avio to develop both a methane-fueled engine and the smallsat rocket to go with it.

The money will be used by Avio on two projects, one to develop an upgraded version of its M10 methane-fueled engine that has already completed two dozen static fire tests, and the other to develop the smallsat rocket, with a targeted first launch in 2026.

While the investment is officially in partnership with the ESA, its wholly-Italian nature suggests in the end it will not be part of Arianespace, but function as an independent competing rocket operated and owned by Avio, which is also the company that developed Arianespace’s Vega family of rockets.

If Italy allows Avio to pull free of ESA and operate as a separate competing rocket company, it will do Europe a favor. Right now the monopolistic nature of ESA is preventing it from competing successfully in the new commercial launch market. Having separately owned and competing private companies will only energize this European industry, which has generally been moribund for years.

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ESA attributes Vega-C launch failure to faulty nozzle from the Ukraine

8:49 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has concluded that the launch failure of the second stage of Arianespace’s Vega-C rocket on December 20, 2022 was caused by a faulty nozzle produced by a company in the Ukraine.

[T]he Commission confirmed that the cause was an unexpected thermo-mechanical over-erosion of the carbon-carbon (C-C) throat insert of the nozzle, procured by Avio in Ukraine. Additional investigations led to the conclusion that this was likely due to a flaw in the homogeneity of the material.

The anomaly also revealed that the criteria used to accept the C-C throat insert were not sufficient to demonstrate its flightworthiness. The Commission has therefore concluded that this specific C-C material can no longer be used for flight. No weakness in the design of Zefiro 40 has been revealed. Avio is implementing an immediate alternative solution for the Zefiro 40’s nozzle with another C-C material, manufactured by ArianeGroup, already in use for Vega’s Zefiro 23 and Zefiro 9 nozzles.

The press release goes to great length to reassure everyone that these Ukrainian nozzles are still flightworthy, that the fix is merely changing the material used in the nozzle’s throat insert.

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Rocket Lab & ESA complete launches

8:40 am

Very early today from New Zealand Rocket Lab successfully launched the first of two quickly scheduled launches for the National Reconnaissance Office, designed to demonstrate its ability to achieve fast scheduling and rapid turnaround. The second launch is targeting July 22, 2022, only ten days later.

Also today the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully completed the first launch of its new upgraded Vega-C rocket, putting its prime payload (a passive test satellite) plus six cubesats into orbit. Though ESA says it will eventually hand over operations to Arianespace, its commercial arm, the rocket itself is mostly built by the Italian company Avio. Also, the rocket’s solid rocket first stage will be used as an optional side booster on the Ariane-6 rocket ArianeGroup is building for ESA.

Though ESA launched Vega-C, as it will eventually be managed by Arianespace I include it in that company’s total, which is now three launches for 2022.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

29 SpaceX
22 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

American private enterprise. now leads China 42 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire globe 42 to 38.

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New Arianespace Vega-C rocket being prepared for first launch in April

9:22 am

Engineers in French Guiana are now preparing all the components of the first Vega-C rocket, built by the Italian company Avio, for its first launch in April.

Vega-C is an upgraded version of the Vega rocket and is currently set to launch no earlier than April 2022. The rocket will feature improved first and second stage solid rocket motors, an upgraded liquid-fueled AVUM+ upper stage, and usher in an era of propulsion system commonality between the Vega and Ariane rocket lines.

At the moment they are modifying the Vega launchpad and building a new mission control center. Once completed in March they will stack the rocket.

Vega-C, like its predecessor, is powered by solid rockets, which Avio believes can be competitive with reusable rockets, at least for the next decade or so. Arianespace also hopes to lower costs by using the exact same solid rocket boosters on both Vega-C and its new Ariane 6 rocket. Vega-C’s first stage, using a P120C solid rocket motor, is also used as side boosters on Ariane 6.

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ESA confirms cause of November Vega launch failure

9:09 am

The European Space Agengy (ESA) has now completed its full investigation of a Vega rocket launch failure in November, and confirmed that the initially announced cause of “human error” was correct.

Engineers had installed cables backwards causing the nozzle in the upper stage to go one way when it should have gone the other.

The press release at the link is a wonder of bureaucratic cover-your-behind gobbly-gook, saying much without providing any concrete information about the corrections imposed. For example, the upper stage structure is built by one company, Airbus, the engine is built by two Russian companies, Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, while a fourth company, Avio, supervises the stage’s assembly. The press release makes it a point to not tell us where the error was made by which company, though by vague implication it suggests the error occurred during final assembly by Avio.

If I was a satellite company thinking of buying a Vega launch I would demand a much more straight-forward explanation. Otherwise I’d go elsewhere.

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Arianespace: Cause of Vega launch failure “human error”

10:18 pm

According to Arianespace officials, today’s failure of their Vega rocket likely occurred because of “human error” in the installation of cables.

Engineers concluded that cables leading to thrust vector control actuators on the upper stage were inverted, apparently a mistake from the assembly of the upper stage engine, according to Roland Lagier, Arianespace’s chief technical officer. The thrust vector control system pivots the upper stage engine nozzle to direct thrust, allowing the rocket to control its orientation and steering.

The cabling problem caused the engine to move its nozzle in the wrong direction in response to commands from the rocket’s guidance system. That resulted in the rocket losing control and tumbling just after ignition of the upper stage engine around eight minutes after launch.

Lagier characterized the inverted cables as a “human error,” and not a design problem.

The next obvious question is the source of the error. The answer was not revealed, I think partly because of the number of contractors involved in building that upper stage:

The AVUM upper stage’s structure is produced by Airbus, and the Ukrainian rocket contractors Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash supply the AVUM stage’s main engine, which consumes hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide propellants. Avio, the Vega rocket’s Italian prime contractor, oversees final integration of the AVUM upper stage.

The goal of the investigation that will now follow will be to point that source among these contracts, and how their interaction might have contributed to it.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket fails again at launch

8:55 am

Early today Arianespace’s Vega rocket failed, for the second time in its last three launches, to put two satellites into orbit.

A liquid-fueled upper stage — known as the Attitude and Vernier Upper Module, or AVUM — was supposed to fire four times Monday night to place the Spanish SEOSAT-Ingenio Earth observation satellite and the Taranis research spacecraft from the French space agency CNES into slightly different orbits at an altitude of roughly 420 miles (676 kilometers) .

But something went wrong just after the first ignition of the AVUM fourth stage. “After the first nominal ignition of the last stage engine, an anomaly has occurred, which caused a trajectory deviation entailing the loss of the mission,” said Avio, the Vega rocket’s Italian prime contractor, in a statement. “Data analyses are in progress to determine the causes.”

This is bad new for Europe’s space effort. It will likely but a crimp in the development of their two next generation rockets, the Ariane 6 and the Vega-C, as the upper stage that failed involves all the contractors building those rockets, Airbus and Avio.

The failure of this particular engine also badly damages the future of the two Ukrainian contractors, Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, who built it. They have lost all business with Russia because of the war between those two countries, and now have this failure to darken their resume with the rest of the world.

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ESA maps out first launch schedule for new rockets

3:19 pm

Capitalism in space? The European Space Agency (ESA) today laid out the development roadmap that will lead to the launch of two new rockets, the Vega-C being built by the Italian company Avio, and the Ariane 6 being built by ArianeGroup.

The Vega-C is a more powerful version of the Vega rocket, aimed at capturing the smaller satellite market. It maiden flight is now scheduled for June ’21.

The Ariane 6 is aimed at replacing the Ariane 5, Europe’s big workhorse rocket, but to do so at a lower cost. Its maiden flight is now set for the second quarter of ’22, a significant delay from the previously announced target date in ’21, which itself was a delay from the original late ’20 launch date.

Ariane 6 however has not succeeded in cutting costs enough to match its competitor SpaceX, and thus it continues to have trouble attracting customers, even among ESA’s partner nations that it is meant to serve. These issues have led to rumors that ESA is already looking to either significantly upgrade Ariane 6 (before it even flies), or replace it entirely wit a new re usable rocket.

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