Space, ESA focuses on Avio for the new Vega E

ESA will further increase the competitiveness and environmental sustainability of the European Vega launch system beyond 2025. With this objective, the European Space Agency today announced the signing of a contract with Avio in Italy for the E version of the Vega. The contract, worth 118.8 million euros, was signed at the ESA plant in Frascati, Italy, by Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA’s Space Transport Director, and Giulio Ranzo, CEO of Avio. The European launcher Vega operates from the European spaceport in French Guiana to launch light satellites on one or more orbits in a single launch and this contract, ESA stressed, “takes Vega one step further by marking the beginning of a new phase in the development of a Vega-E for Evolution vehicle that will make extensive use of Vega-C building blocks “. ESA indicated that the key to achieving these goals “is the use of new technologies for a completely new upper stage, featuring a new low-cost liquid fuel engine”. ESA’s goal with the Vega-E is to further increase the competitiveness and performance of Vega-C whose first flight is scheduled for 2022 by increasing its flexibility in terms of payload mass and volume and reducing service costs. launch and, globally, the launch cost per kilo offered on the market. “The upper stage of the Vega-E will replace the third stage Zefiro 9 solid propellant motor and the fourth Avum upper stage of the current Vega configuration. This will have a beneficial effect on performance and cost,” explained Renato Lafranconi, program manager for Vega. of the ESA. “The contract signed today – said the CEO of Avio Giulio Ranzo – is an expression of the great confidence that the European Space Agency continues to have in Avio and its capabilities.” For Ranzo “these are very important funds that allow us, a few months after the qualification launch of the new Vega C carrier expected in 2022, to look forward and work on the revolutionary Vega E launcher which will fly in the coming years and which will be even more competitive and attentive to environmental needs. In fact, in Perdasdefogu, Sardinia, we have recently completed our new Space Propulsion Test Facility, the technological plant where we will carry out, by the end of the year, the test of the new cryogenic upper stage M10 fueled by methane and liquid oxygen “. Specifically, Vega-E will have three stages unlike Vega-C which has four. Two stages will be derived from Vega-C: the first-stage P120C solid rocket engine providing takeoff thrust and the second-stage Zefiro-40 solid rocket engine. The new third stage is the cryogenic liquid oxygen-methane upper stage which is the heart of the development of Vega-E. The Vega-E upper stage will improve mission flexibility through its new M10 expansion cycle engine with multiple re-ignition capability. The M10’s full-size 3D printed thrust chamber assembly passed its first batch of hot cooking tests last year, which also qualified new efficient manufacturing methods. “The reduction of emissions and combustion waste makes the introduction of the M10 engine a further improvement in environmental sustainability which is a driving factor for the future of Vega” added Adriana Sirbi, Vega Evolution Preparation Manager at ESA. Industries and universities from eleven countries are involved in the preparation of the Vega-E launch system and will contribute to the success of this European rocket. The first contractor, Avio, with the partners will further define the launch system and its subsystems, as well as the preliminary design of the Vega-E launch platform and the infrastructure associated with the European spaceport in French Guiana.