back to article Vega-C finally launches ESA's next Sentinel satellite

Arianespace has finally managed to return the Vega-C to flight carrying a Sentinel payload for the European Space Agency (ESA). After repeated delays, the third Vega-C lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana on the northeast coast of South America at 2120 UTC on December 5, almost two years to the day after …

  1. Mage Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Finally!

    Finally!

    ESA's Director of Space Transportation, Toni Tolker-Nielsen, said: "Today's launch marks a crucial step forward, reaffirming European independent access to space. With Vega-C back in flight and the inaugural launch of Ariane 6 in July, we are in a great place going forward and I salute all the hard-working teams all over Europe and its spaceport who have worked tirelessly to achieve this success."

    Alternate to India, SpaceX, China and Russia.

    For too long the ESA had no working rockets.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ESA has redefined de-orbit?

    "The satellite has been successfully de-orbited and will reenter Earth’s atmosphere within 25 years," according to ESA.

    Surely if it has been de-orbited, then it must no longer be in orbit?

    1. Excused Boots Silver badge

      Re: ESA has redefined de-orbit?

      Yes it is some really weird definition of ‘deorbit’

      Let’s just put it down to sloppy reporting and move on, yes?

      1. Justthefacts Silver badge

        Re: ESA has redefined de-orbit?

        Well, I *would* put it down to a sloppy definition…..the EU are just in the process of signing off their EU Space Law, which will require to deorbit (really deorbit!), within 5 years not 25. It was supposed to be signed off in June actually, but it’s still waiting. This will involve the EU Space Commission (which is *not ESA*) have a new large regulatory role…..and of course a large budget. Copernicus (Sentinel) is an *EU* space program, no longer an ESA one. They don’t stick to their own rules……

        As an aside, one of the big unreported stories is the new role in Space that the EU Commission has carved out for itself over the last fifteen years, separate to ESA. It’s a massive turf war. But the media and public just assume that ESA is part of EU; when it fact the EU Commission have spent the last fifteen years systematically sabotaging ESA programs and dismantling its role, in a power grab. The process really gained momentum with the unfortunate complicity of the previous ESA DG Dordain, who ruled until 2015, and made a deal with the devil. He really, really, really wanted Exomars to succeed, and to go down in history as the DG who sent Europe to Mars. He told the EU Commission that they could have absolutely everything so long as they left him Exomars. But of course, Exomars Rover never left the ground in the end. It’s so sad, because at least Dordain had a technical engineering background. His successor Worner was an irrelevant puppet of the Commission, with no aerospace background; and Aschbacher was brought on specifically to gift transfer the EU Commission the Copernicus program. There’s just no time for engineering among the power battles at court.

  3. ecarlseen

    “By comparison, the Vega-C mission marked the 351st launch by Arianespace in a considerably longer timeframe.”

    Timeline perspective: SpaceX has launched roughly as many rockets in the past six months as Arianspace has in the past fifteen years, and has a planned cadence of more launches per fortnight than Arianspace has planned per year for the rest of the decade.

  4. Death Boffin
    Facepalm

    Why?

    I'm trying to wrap my head around why a RADAR satellite needs a Sun Synchronous Orbit. The whole point of a RADAR satellite is that it works despite lighting and cloud cover. Anybody?

    1. Spazturtle Silver badge

      Re: Why?

      It means that the satellite will overfly the same place at the same time of day, so for weather data you can make better comparisons.

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