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By the numbers

• The Soyuz launch vehicle has been in continuous production since 1957, demonstrating its unmatched reliability with more than 1,700 missions to date.
• Vega is scheduled to enter operation in 2011 with a target payload lift capability of 1,500 kg. on missions to a 700-km. circular orbit.

Soyuz & Vega at the Spaceport

Vega's first flight: Assembly is completed for the no. 1 launcher

January 26, 2012

The first Vega lightweight launcher has completed its build-up at the Spaceport in French Guiana, and will now undergo final checkout for a liftoff scheduled on February 9.

This maiden flight will be performed under responsibility of the European Space Agency, and is to qualify the overall Vega system – including the launcher, ground infrastructure and operations from the launch campaign to payload delivery in orbit. 

As a result, it represents an important step towards the lightweight vehicle’s introduction in Arianespace’s launcher family at the Spaceport, which already consists of the heavy-lift Ariane 5 and the medium-lift Soyuz.

Build-up of the Vega on its launch pad was completed January 24 with the integration of its “upper composite” – consisting of nine satellites and their protective payload fairing atop the vehicle.

During the upcoming mission, Vega's AVUM fourth stage will first reach a circular orbit at an altitude of 1,450 km. and an inclination of 70 deg. to release the Italian LARES laser relativity satellite, which is the flight’s main passenger.   Built for the ASI Italian space agency by CGS S.p.A. Compagnia Generale per lo Spazio, LARES is a small solid tungsten sphere weighing nearly 390 kg. and featuring 92 retroreflectors. Ground stations will send laser pulses to measure the precise time it takes the beams to travel between the ground and the passive satellite as it passes overhead.

LARES builds on the experience of two Italian-American geodetic missions (Lageos-1 and Lageos-2), and is to improve measurements of the Lense-Thirring effect by a factor of 10.  The Lense-Thirring effect is the part of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity that describes the distortion of space-time caused by the rotation of a body with mass.

After LARES is deployed during Vega’s inaugural flight, the launcher’s AVUM fourth stage will then perform a maneuver lowering its perigee to 350 km. before deploying the eight other satellites.  The largest of these is ALMASat-1 (the ALma MAter SATellite), a 12.5-kg. technology demonstrator microsatellite developed and built by the University of Bologne.  Its launch will test the performance of this low-cost, multipurpose 30-cm. platform to prepare for future missions in technology demonstration applications or Earth observation.

Completing the satellite payload are seven CubeSats that have been developed by more than 250 university students from six different countries.  They represent four years of work in the European Space Agency’s CubeSat program, which began in 2007 when the organization decided to include an educational payload on the Vega launch vehicle’s maiden flight. 

The CubeSats are picosatellites of standardized dimensions – cubes of 10 cm. per side, with a maximum mass of 1 kg. – which can be operated from university or radio amateur ground stations. They serve as an educational tool that offers hands-on experience for aerospace engineering students in designing, developing, testing and operating a spacecraft system and its ground segment.  

When Vega enters the Arianespace launcher family, it will provide a capable system for orbiting small- to medium-sized satellites, responding to the growing number of small institutional, scientific spacecraft and other payloads in this category that are under development or planned worldwide.  The benchmark mission is for a 1,500 kg. payload lift performance into a 700 km.-altitude circular orbit. 

Vega has three solid-propellant stages, along with a liquid-propellant upper module for attitude/orbit control and satellite deployment.  It will operate from the Spaceport’s ZLV launch site, which originally was used for the Ariane 1 and Ariane 3 vehicles, and has been refurbished for its new role with Vega.

The upcoming maiden mission is designated VV01 using Arianespace’s numbering system, with the first “V” representing the French word for flight (“vol”), and the second letter referring to Vega.

• Related links:
  European Space Agency    
  Italian Space Agency