The 2020-11-16 Vega launch failure destroyed Hisdesat’s SEOSAT-Ingenio and the TARANIS spacecraft built by CNES.
On 2020-11-16, Vega’s upper stage malfunctioned eight minutes after liftoff from Europe’s French Guiana spaceport, resulting in the loss of the Spanish SEOSAT-Ingenio satellite and the 175-kilogram TARANIS satellite built by the French Space Agency CNES.
The Vega VV17 mission was carrying two payloads: SEOSAT-Ingenio for the European Space Agency (ESA) and TARANIS for France’s National Centre for Space Studies (CNES).
The Vega rocket carrying SEOSAT-Ingenio and TARANIS lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana on November 16, 2020.
TARANIS, or Tool for the Analysis of RAdiation from lightNIng and Sprites, was built by the French space agency CNES to study electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere created by thunderstorms.
CNES intends to build a second TARANIS satellite and formed a task force with until late January 2021 to develop a TARANIS 2 proposal.
SEOSAT-Ingenio was mounted atop a VESPA (Vega Secondary Payload Adaptor) dispenser produced by Airbus in Spain for Vega prime contractor Avio, with TARANIS positioned inside the VESPA structure.
TARANIS was launched for the French CNES space agency and is part of CNES’ Myriade small satellite family.
Both SEOSAT-Ingenio and TARANIS were planned to operate in similar Sun-synchronous orbits at an altitude of approximately 700 km.
TARANIS, the 175-kilogram Tool for the Analysis of RAdiation from lightNIng and Sprites, was built by the French space agency CNES to study electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere created by thunderstorms.
Vega will deploy TARANIS at 1 hour, 42 minutes into the mission, marking the conclusion of Arianespace Flight VV17.