Arianespace’s Vega C Rocket Returns to Flight in Copernicus Mission

Arianespace‘s Vega C rocket returned to flight on Thursday, its first launch after a failure during its second mission two years ago. Vega C launched on December 5 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, lofting the Sentinel-1C Earth observation satellite to orbit. 

Vega C launched at 6:20 p.m. local time in Kourou, French Guiana. The satellite was successfully deployed 1 hour and 44 minutes after takeoff. 

The launch took off on Thursday after a day’s delay due to a mechanical issue with the mobile gantry. 

It was a return to flight for Vega C, an enhanced version of the Vega lightweight vehicle, designed for greater flexibility and more payload mass. After the 2022 failure, contractor Avio completely rebuilt the nozzle of the second stage Zefiro-40 engine, which caused the issue. It took two years to return to flight because an updated Zefiro-40 engine had significant damages during a test last year.

Sentinel-1C is the third satellite in Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, which provides radar imagery monitoring the Earth’s land and oceans. This data supports environmental management, disaster response, and climate change research.

The first satellite, Sentinel-1A, was launched in April of 2014. The second satellite, Sentinel-1B, went out of service in August 2022 after a failure and has been de-orbited. ESA said that Sentinel-1C will soon take over the role of Sentinel-1B in the mission.

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