ESA Delays Vega C Return To Flight To Late 2024

The return to flight of Europe's Vega C small launch vehicle has slipped to late 2024 after the European Space Agency concluded a rocket motor nozzle needs to be redesigned. From a report: ESA announced Oct. 2 the completion of an independent investigation into an anomaly that took place during a static-fire test of a Zefiro 40 motor June 28. That test was part of efforts to return the Vega C to flight after a December 2022 launch failure blamed on that motor. Giovanni Colangelo, ESA's inspector general and chair of the committee that investigated the incident, said at a briefing that the performance of the motor was "more or less normal" until 39.7 seconds after ignition. At that point, a new throat insert made of carbon-carbon material was expelled from the nozzle, along with other pieces of the nozzle. The motor continued to burn, although at far lower pressures, until the fuel was exhausted. The test was intended to confirm the performance of the throat insert, which prime contractor Avio had replaced as part of the recommendations into the December 2022 launch failure. That investigation, released in March, concluded that carbon-carbon material from the original supplier, Ukrainian company Yuzhnoye, did not meet specifications. ArianeGroup now supplies the throat insert. At the time ESA hoped to resume Vega C flights by the end of 2023. The June test anomaly was not linked to that launch failure, ESA concluded. "The failure of the test is related to the design of the nozzle that was not upgraded with the change in the carbon-carbon supplier for the throat insert," Colangelo said. The geometry of the new throat insert and its different thermo-mechanical properties contributed to the failure. "The effects had not been identified as critical during the redesign."

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