Perhaps they should have ....
.... launched it from Cape Canaveral a week ago. I'm sure the USians would have got a big buzz out of it then.
(Just for clarification this was posted on the 11th of July)
Arianespace's Vega rocket suffered its first failure last night and dumped its United Arab Emirates payload into the Atlantic Ocean. The 15th launch of the booster had been grounded for days due to high winds at the launch complex in French Guiana. The previous 14, including the maiden flight in 2012, had all gone off without …
Falcon Eye 1 was built by Airbus Defence and Space and Thales Alenia. It featured a high-resolution Imager, HiRI, imaging system with a ground resolution of 70 cm across a 20 km swath. It was built for the use of the UAE Armed Forces.
Sounds like there might be more to this than is being made public.
A launcher anomaly occurred during Flight #VV15 shortly after ignition of the Zefiro 23 second stage, leading to premature end of the mission. Data analyses are in progress to clarify reasons for this failure. An independent inquiry commission will be set up in the coming hours.
Translation: "Something broke and the whole thing went 'boom'. ".
They have an excellent track record of successful launches and quite cheap too. IIRC they sent a mission to Mars, all for $74 million !
On the other hand, why has Donald duck not blamed the Iranians, yet ? After all, UAE is thier ally and he is itching for any excuse for war.
Or to rather to Mr Musk.
A Whole falcon 9 is $60m if you want a completely new one.
Less than $40m for a one careful user with a full service history.
This is book price before any discounts or ride sharing.
After this crash the Flacon now has better reliability than the Vega, with a vastly superior payload and orbital injection capability.
Vega book cost is $37m per launch for just 1,450kg to LEO.
A used Falcon9 launch is about the same cost now and can do 13,500kg to the same orbit.
The UEA could have launch both sats on the same Flacon 9 for the same price as this one on a Vega rocket.
Falcon9 does more successful launches per year than the Vega has ever done and after this failure is actully more reliable including its earlier failures.
Just dont use a Northrop Grumman deployment (use SpaceXs as that works).