An important night for Space was that of 20 April. Within a few hours, from 3:50 am Italian time to 5:44 am, they started in sequence: the VV 18 mission of the European carrier Vega, conceived, designed and built by the Italian Avio, the first module of the new Chinese space station and finally, the seventh mission of SpaceX’s Starlink project, which with a reused Falcon 9 vector, put another 60 satellites into orbit for its constellation for the internet from space.
With this Vega returns to full success: starting from the European launch base in French Guiana, it has brought 6 satellites into orbit, the French satellite Pleiades Neo 3, together with 5 microsatellites, all perfectly successful. Therefore, the serious moment of impasse due to the failure of the previous mission, the VV17, which failed due to an apparently trivial mistake during the assembly phase has been overcome.
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It is difficult for the person outside the field to understand how a trivial interchange of connectors or even a poorly mounted gasket for pennies, as it was thirty years ago in the dramatic case, then solved, of the billionaire Hubble Space Telescope. disastrous, but putting together a rocket or satellite involves assembling thousands of parts, following thousands of procedures.
The recovery after the bankruptcy
In the case of Vega, as reported by Giulio Ranzo, CEO of Avio, after the accident, 4 thousand assembly procedures were critically reviewed and this has allowed us to gain experience that will now make the launches of Vega carriers, which are a resource, safer. fundamental for Europe, in the Space Economy market, which is defined by many, Morgan Stanley for example, literally boiling, with prospects of triple or more in the annual turnover in a couple of decades, today of about 300 billion .
All the more reason the perfect success of the Vega VV18 launch, which goes alongside the many previous successes, makes the Italian company breathe a sigh of relief, put under stress in recent months. Satisfied Ranzo who, on the eve of the shareholders’ meeting held on the same day, confirms the confidence of the market, represented by the very prosperous customer portfolio, the best cash situation ever and the distribution of a dividend.