Vega Operations: Transition to Commercial Operations and New Developments

摘要

VEGA was born to cover an essential role within the family of European launchers; the four-stage vehicle is tailored to cover a wide range of missions in low earth orbit and will complement Ariane (which is optimized for large satellites and missions to GTO and LEO as well as escape missions) and Soyuz (tailored for medium satellites to LEO and small spacecraft to GTO). The Vega launch system is developed by the European Space Agency, and commercially operated by ELV (launcher system prime contractor) and Arianespace (launch service provider). The qualification flight from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana was performed in February 2012. A second successful qualification flight in the frame of the' ESA operated Verta flights was performed in May 2013 carrying the ESA Proba Vegetation spacecraft and the first non-ESA institutional earth observation spacecraft, the Vietnamese VNREDSat. The third flight was performed in May 2014 carrying the commercial earth observation spacecraft DZZ for the Government of Kazakhstan using a Verta launch vehicle. The fourth flight, a Verta flight carrying the ESA IXV re-entry capsule, was performed in February 2015. The fifth flight was performed in June 2015 carrying the European earth observation spacecraft Sentinel-2 using a Verta launch vehicle. The last Verta flight and sixth Vega flight was performed in December 2015 carrying the LISA Pathfinder scientific spacecraft. From 2016 onwards Vega will enter full commercial operations having completed the transition phase under the ESA-led Verta development program, leaving the commercial exploitation of the launch system fully in industry hands, led by ELV (a joint AVIO and ASI company) and Arianespace, with the support of CNES for the launch range operations. ESA will continue supporting the Vega commercial operations by running necessary delta-developments and improvements on the existing launch system, and in parallel by running the development of the upgraded higher performance Vega-C launch system expected to enter into commercial operations in 2019. This paper presents an overview of the current and future Vega launch system operations, in particular on ongoing improvements and evolutions during commercial operations and beyond for the new the launch system, with a focus on launch operations and on the launch complex and launch range facilities.