Build-up of a pathfinder Vega at the Spaceport will include a flight-qualified payload fairing, to be used for one of the lightweight launcher’s introductory flights. Vega will be operated from the Spaceport’s ELA-1 facility, which previously was used between 1979 and 1989 for missions with the Ariane 1 and 3 launcher versions. It entered service with the Ariane 1’s maiden flight in December 1979, and was last used for an Ariane 3 launch in July 1989. Refurbishment activity already completed at ELA-1 for its new role with Vega includes upgrading and resurfacing the concrete launch pad, installing a new purpose-built mobile gantry, refurbishing the support infrastructure (including electrical power and the environmental control system), and connecting the site’s various supply lines.
Claude-Henri Berna, the Arianespace Vega program director in French Guiana, said an important upcoming milestone is integrated testing of the facility with all systems and subsystems — ranging from the mobile gantry’s elevator and overhead crane to the launch site’s electrical power system. This activity should start this summer and will be followed by the assembly of a pathfinder Vega using non-flight or inert components in stacking the three-stage vehicle early next year. The vehicle will be topped off with a flight-qualified payload fairing, which subsequently is to be used on one of Vega’s introductory flights. A four-month launch campaign for qualification purposes is targeted to begin just after the combined tests with the pathfinder Vega, after which the launch system will be authorized for its entry into service.
Vega is powered by three solid propellant stages and is topped off with the bi-propellant AVUM (Attitude and Vernier Upper Module) — which can perform as many as five burns to deploy the launcher’s payload in its final orbit. Berna said training has begun with a group of Arianespace Vega launch team members, including mission directors, payload managers and launch site operations managers. Vega launch teams will follow the same operational launch campaign procedures as for Ariane 5 flights, which maintains continuity in Arianespace’s overall mission process. Berna said this also opens the possibility of assigning personnel to either a Vega or Ariane 5 mission — enhancing flexibility, and providing a broader experience for team members. Following the maiden qualification mission, a series of flights will be conducted with a full range of payload configurations in order to validate Vega for its various applications on missions with small- and medium-sized spacecraft to low-Earth and Sun-synchronous missions. This is expected to involve:
- A launch with one payload weighing approximately 1,000 kg.
- A dual-passenger arrangement that carries a small and a medium-sized spacecraft
- A flight with two 400-kg.-class satellites
- A mission with a primary payload and a piggyback passenger
- A launch with the European Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle (IXV) atmospheric reentry demonstrator