At 11.00 Central European Time this morning the new European Vega (Vettore Europeo di Generazione Avanzata, the Italian for European Advanced Generation Carrier Rocket) launcher lift off from the European launch base in French Guiana to successfully achieve what is called qualification flight, which is the first real flight in which it carries a payload of satellites that were placed in orbit.

The Vega launcher is designed to be versatile and carry satellites with a weight ranging from 300 kg to 2,500 kg to put them in a wide range of orbits. In this way Europe adds a launcher to the already existing Ariane 5 and Soyuz becoming very competitive in the field of small and medium satellite launches. This is important also from a commercial point of view because there’s a huge demand for launchers that can bring to orbit scientific satellites but also telecommunications satellites.

The Vega launcher is composed of four stages, three using solid fuel and the fourth using liquid fuel. The P80 first stage is what allows the lift off, the Zefiro-23 second stage and Zefiro-9 third stage – Zefiro = ZEro First Stage Rocket Motor, a name created at the beginning of the project, when they were the first two stages – carry the load into orbit and the AVUM (Attitude and Vernier Upper Module) fourth stage is the one that allows the final insertion of the load in orbit.

The AVUM liquid propellant is constituted by unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) and nitrogen tetraoxide which allows the engine to turn on and off to bring the various satellites into different orbits with great flexibility.

In this launch, the most important part of the payload is the LARES (LAser RElativity Satellite), an Italian satellite that is designed to study aspects of the general theory of relativity. It consists of a sphere of tungsten alloy covered with 99 cube-corner retroreflectors (CCR), optical instruments that reflect light beams, specifically laser beams sent from Earth to determine its position with extreme accuracy.

The other eight minisatellites put into orbit were made by various European universities: ALMASat-1 (University of Bologna), e-St@r (Italy), Goliat (Romania), MaSat-1 (Hungary), PW-Sat (Poland), Robusta (France), UniCubeSat GG (Italy) and Xatcobeo (Spain).

This is a big success for ESA and in particular for Italy, the nation that has contributed the most to its development through ELV SpA, a company specially created and partially owned by Italian Space Agency. The other countries that participated in the Vega project, started in 1998, are: Belgium, France, Holland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.