Europe's Vega rocket is finally set to make its maiden flight Monday. The 30m-tall vehicle, first conceived in the 1990s, will launch on what is termed a qualification flight from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana. It will carry nine satellites into orbit but the object of the mission is really to prove the rocket's systems all work as designed. Vega has been developed to assure European access to space for payload classes weighing less than 2.5 tons. At the moment, these smaller satellites tend to ride converted Russian ICBMs to get into orbit and they can sometimes wait many months to get a launch slot. Vega should allow European operators to have more control over the schedules of their space projects. It also means that the value of what it is an immensely high-tech enterprise will return to the European economy, not to foreign industry. “Vega gives Europe the ability to launch small satellites,” said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency (Esa). “New technologies — and in particular the miniaturisation of technologies — are making for more and more small satellites. This is particularly true of scientific satellites such as Earth observation spacecraft. So, Vega has a fantastic perspective in front of it provided we succeed,” he told me. The launch in French Guiana is scheduled to take place between 10:00 and 12:00 GMT. There will inevitably be a degree of nervousness in launch control at Kourou come lift-off time. According to statistics compiled by the Ascend aerospace consultancy, 58% (11 out of 19) of new rockets since 1990 have experienced a major anomaly on their first flight. It is for this reason that the satellites carried on Vega's maiden voyage have all been given a “free ride”. Stefano Bianchi, Esa's Vega program manager, explained: “Of course, we understand more about [the way rockets perform today] — we have more modellisation capability, computers, etc, but it is clear that at system level you have things you cannot test on the ground. And you have to rely on the first flight. “You do all the verification, you take all of the margins on what is unknown, but still the first flight is always a test.” Vega is a four-stage vehicle. Its first three segments burn a solid fuel. Its fourth and final stage uses liquid propellants and can be stopped and restarted several times to get a spacecraft into just the right orbit. The stage can also bring itself out of the sky - something deemed very important these days given the rising concern over space debris. A significant innovation is the way the motor cases are prepared for the first three stages employing a high-strength graphite ?bre and epoxy resin.
