The twenty-third mission of the light Vega rocket, which was scheduled to carry twelve satellites on board, was canceled on Friday evening, a few seconds before its launch from the Guyana Space Center.
At 10:36 p.m. (1:36 a.m. GMT Saturday), when the final schedule was announced, the launch was canceled after “one element of the launch array was not ready,” said Arianespace, which is responsible for marketing spaceflight. European. Since there is only one launch window, the mission has been postponed to a date yet to be announced.
This third and final European launch of 2023 was intended to place two Earth observation satellites and ten other small satellites into low orbit, with a total weight of 1.2 tons of payload.
The two main passengers scheduled for launch for this mission are Theos-2, a high-resolution optical observation satellite, and Formosat-7R/Triton, a science satellite equipped with a system to collect signals bouncing back from the sea surface to prevent hurricanes. Respectively on behalf of the Thai Geospatial Information and Space Technology Development Agency and the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA).
Ten other small satellites, including the Ness technology experimental nanosatellite, developed by the French Space Agency, have been part of the 23rd Vega mission – including two failures – since its first liftoff in 2012.
With this aborted launch, the Europeans are left with two Vega rockets, an earlier version of the Italian Vega-C rocket, which has been grounded since its first commercial flight failed in December.
Over the first six months of the year, Arianespace launched one Ariane 5 rocket on behalf of the European Space Agency (the last one was at the beginning of July), while US company SpaceX carried out 43 Falcon 9 launches – an average of about two per week. . and Chinese CASC 18.
