/sci/ - Science & Math

>>15904079
What happens in Vega didn’t stay in Vega, as key rocket parts went missing
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https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/12/italian-rocket-maker-has-a-problem-key-parts-of-final-vega-booster-were-trashed/
> The Italy-based aerospace company Avio has not had the best of luck with its Vega rocket, which has always been something of an odd duck in the launch industry. Now, as the rocket nears its final launch, it's missing some critical components.
> The European Spaceflight newsletter reports that two of the four propellant tanks on the fourth stage of the Vega rocket—the upper stage, which is powered by dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide fuel—went missing earlier this year.
>Now, it seems that the propellant tanks have been found. However, the newsletter says, the tanks were recovered in a dismal state, crushed, alongside metal scraps in a landfill. Someone, apparently, had trashed the tanks. This is a rather big problem for Avio, as this was to be the final Vega rocket launched, and the production lines are now closed for this hardware.
> This Vega rocket is due to launch the 1,250-kg BIOMASS satellite for the European Space Agency, a mission that will employ a P-band synthetic aperture radar to assess the health of forests on Earth and determine how they are changing. The satellite is valued at more than $200 million.
> One big problem for Vega is its price. While the vehicle's marketer, Arianespace, does not publicly publish prices, a Vega launch costs approximately $35 million to $40 million. This was barely competitive a decade ago when the vehicle debuted. Now it's out-of-bounds with a new generation of small launch companies that offer lower prices, or the more reliable Falcon 9, which only costs about 50 percent more for much more lift capacity.
> Another challenge has been reliability. The Vega rocket had suffered two failures in its last seven launches and has a lifetime failure rate of 10 percent across 21 launches.