The launch of the Spanish satellite Seosat -…

The European Space Agency (ESA) Vega VV17 rocket carrying the Spanish satellite Seosat-Ingenio and the French Taranis deviated from the planned path barely eight minutes after take-off, its launch from Kourou, French Guiana, failed.

“Eight minutes after takeoff, a path deviation was identified which led to the loss of the mission “ESA and launch company Arianespace reported in a joint statement.

“Analysis of the telemetry data is underway to determine the cause of this failure,” they added.

This is the seventh launch of the year – and the 17th carried out by the Vega launcher since its first takeoff from the Guyanese Space Center in 2012 – of Arianespace, which aimed to put two satellites into orbit: the Spanish Seosat-Ingenio for ESA, on behalf of the Center for the Development of Industrial Technologies (CDTI) of Spain and the French Taranis, for the gala space agency CNES.

The rocket, which carried the two satellites, had been launched on time, at 01:52 GMT and planned, according to Arianespace’s plans, to separate the Spanish satellite 54 minutes after takeoff and to do it once with the French satellite hour and 42 minutes after launch.

In this sense, the Ingenio satellite should have freed itself from the rocket to place itself in a sun-synchronous orbit (following the direction of the sun as if it were a sunflower), at an altitude of about 670 kilometers, from where he planned to observe Earth for the next seven. years – although he had fuel for ten years.

Ingenio, milestone in the Spanish aerospace industry

Ingenio is considered one of the milestones of the Spanish aerospace industry, since it is the first Earth observation satellite in this country. Its construction was in charge of an industrial consortium of companies in the Spanish space sector led by Airbus Defense and Space.

Ingenio’s goal was to achieve uniform coverage of areas of interest in Spain, providing a high operational capability of capturing high-resolution multispectral optical terrestrial images for many user groups, in addition to supporting and optimize the development of applications in this country. based on remote sensing.

In this way, the Spanish satellite would provide information for applications in the fields of mapping, land use, urban management, water management, environmental monitoring, risk management and security.