Remember the Vega Launch from Earlier this Month?

European Spaceflight is reporting this week that two of the cubesats in the payload of Vega mission VV23 failed to be deployed and most likely burned up in the atmosphere with the rocket’s upper stage.

The Vega VV23 flight was launched on October 9 at 01:36 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana. The rocket carried the THEOS-2 and FORMOSAT-7R/TRITON satellites as its primary payloads and ten smaller satellites as secondary payloads.

Following a successful launch, Arianespace published a press release confirming that the two primary payloads and eight of the ten secondary payloads had been deployed. However, the launch services provider added that “the separation of the last 2 cubesats is still to be confirmed.”

In an email sent by Arianespace to the affected teams that European Spaceflight has seen, the ESA explained that the ESTCube-2 and ANSER-Leader cubesats likely failed to separate from their respective deployers.  They noted that there was no feedback from the switches on the deployers and that by itself, it could mean the satellites weren't deployed or that the monitoring switch itself was bad.  They followed that by noting that NORAD tracked 10 objects after the deployment while there should have been 12 and that neither of the two teams could contact their cubesats, which nullifies that first statement that the monitoring switch could be the problem.

ESTcube-2 was built by the Estonian Student Satellite Foundation and was supposed to test an innovative plasma brake that could be used for end-of-life satellite disposal.

ANSER-Leader is one of three ANSER satellites that were launched aboard the VEGA VV23 flight for the Spanish National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) along with ANSER-Follower 1 and ANSER-Follower 2.

The Spanish INTA agency said that losing ANSER-Leader wasn't a major impact to the missions, saying that all three satellites are “fully equipped and programmed to communicate with the ground directly.” “Any of them can take over the role of the leader if in the near future it is decided to operate in this “only one node communicating with the ground” way.” The spokesperson also confirmed that “at this point, we are nominally operating the remaining two [satellites].”

The launch of the VV23 mission.  Image Credit, ESA/CNES/Arianespace 

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And just for fun, this is post #4700 to this blog. At the current rate of things, 5000 is around 9-1/2 to 10 months from now. Thanks to all y'all who drop by, as we say.