Vega rocket failure apparently caused by human error

An Arianespace Vega rocket carrying two satellites failed to reach orbit yesterday after suffering a catastrophic failure eight minutes after launch. Officials attribute the loss of the rocket to a “series of human errors.”

Flight Vega VV17 started well, with the 98 feet tall (30-metre) rocket leaving the Guyanese Space Center at 8:52 p.m. ET. The first three stages, all powered by solid fuels, did their job, propelling the vehicle and its cargo over the Atlantic Ocean towards space. It was when the liquid-fed upper stage started that things went wrong.

According to the satellite launch company Arianespace, the problem started around the eight-minute mark of the mission. At the moment, the upper stage, called AVUM (Attitude and Vernier Upper Module), properly detached and ignited, in what was supposed to be the first of four consecutive rocket fires. However, immediately after the first ignition, AVUM derailed, never to recover. The upper stage and its cargo – the Spanish Earth observation satellite SEOSAT-Ingenio and the French atmospheric observation satellite TARANIS – plunged into an uninhabited area, said an Arianespace declaration.

“This evening during the Vega VV17 mission … an anomaly occurred which caused a deviation of the trajectory resulting in the loss of the mission”, explained Avio, the prime contractor of the Vega rocket, in a report. in short declaration.

The failure of the launch, the second for Arianespace in its last three attempts, represents a loss of $ 400 million, reports SpaceflightNow.

Speaking at a press conference Earlier today, Arianespace technical director Roland Lagier said the upper stage went into an irrecoverable fall when the main engine burned, causing it to completely derail, as SpaceNews reports. He added that the mission’s telemetry data, along with production notes from the factory, indicated a probable cause for the flight anomaly. It appears that the cables connected to a pair of thrust vector control actuators have been reversed.

Because these two cables were installed backwards, commands intended for one actuator were transmitted to the other, resulting in the tumbling action. As Arianespace noted in its statement, “A problem with the integration of the fourth stage AVUM nozzle activation system is the most likely cause of the launcher losing control.

“It was clearly a production and quality issue, a series of human errors and not a design issue,” Lagier said, as reported in SpaceNews.

Arianespace will continue to investigate the incident with the help of the European Space Agency, as the company explains in its statement:

In accordance with their standard protocols, Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA) will set up an independent commission of inquiry co-chaired by Daniel Neuenschwander, director of space transport at ESA, and Stéphane Israël, director general of Arianespace, the November 18. The Commission will provide detailed evidence to explain why steps were not taken to identify and correct the integration error. The Commission will draw up a roadmap for the return to flight of the Vega in conditions of total reliability. Arianespace and ESA will jointly present the conclusions of this commission.

Arianespace said future launches, including three slated for later this year, should not be affected by this latest setback. Speaking at the press conference, Stéphane Israël, CEO of Arianespace, said yesterday’s accident was unrelated to the Vega launch failed from July 10, 2019, in which an imaging satellite belonging to the United Arab Emirates was lost. Arianespace attributed this incident to a structural problem with the second stage of Vega, which has since been resolved.

Incidents involving spatial and human errors are rare, but they do happen. Some notorious examples include the loss of NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999 due to the engineering team conversion failure imperial measurements in metric and a recent air leak on the ISS attributed to poor workmanship (or possibly sabotage).