The first mission of Europe's new rocket didn't go as planned.
The Vega C lifted off from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. In the early hours of December 21st, two satellites for the Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging constellation were sent into space.
The P 120C was the first stage of the rocket. The second stage, called theZefiro 40, didn't.
Representatives of Arianespace, the French company that operates the Vega C, said in an email that the mission ended after 2 minutes and 27 seconds. Data analyses are being done to figure out why this failed.
There is a history of rockets.
Arianespace is the operator of the Vega C.
The four-stage rocket is more powerful than the one that flew in 2012 and is 115 feet tall. According to Arianespace, the Vega C can carry more than 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilograms) of cargo to a sun-synchronous altitude of 700 kilometers.
The Pléiades Neo 5 and Pléiades Neo 6 weighed in at over 4,000 lbs. They were going to complete the Pléiades Neo Earth-imaging constellation.
"The constellation is made of four identical satellites, built using the latest Airbus innovations and technological developments, and allows to image any point of the globe, several times per day, at 30-centimeter [12 inches] resolution," Arianespace wrote.
They can be tasked up to 15 minutes before acquisition and send the images back to Earth. They are the first of their class whose capacity will be commercially available.
There was one flight under its belt before Tuesday. The Italian Space Agency's LARES-2 was lofted by the rocket in July 2022.
The mission was supposed to launch on November 24. It took Arianespace nearly a month to replace faulty equipment on the rocket, a process that had to be done in Kourou.
It is possible that the faulty equipment had something to do with the launch failure. A media teleconference is planned for 10 a.m. on Wednesday. The time is 1500GMT.
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