Taranis & Seosat

Launch Failure

Liftoff Time (GMT)

01:52:20

Tuesday November 17, 2020

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Mission Details

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Launch Notes

Flight VV17. AVUM 4th stage lost attitude control during burn due to wrongly connected electrical wiring of electro-mechanical actuators controls for the 4th stage Thrust Vector Control (TVC) system. Both payloads re-entered the atmosphere before making a complete orbit.

Taranis

Wiki

Taranis, named after the Celtic god of lightning and thunder, is an observation satellite of the French Space Agency (CNES) that will study the transient events produced in the Earth's atmospheric layer between 10 kilometres and 100 kilometres altitude. The satellite is intended to collect data on transient events that are observed during thunderstorms. These events are happening between the medium and upper atmosphere, the ionosphere, and the magnetosphere (radiation belts). The resulting phenomena in visible light are called Transient Luminous Events (TLE) and take a great diversity of forms (elves, halos, blue jets) varying in color, shape, and duration. Thunderstorms are also known to generate gamma and X-ray emissions called Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flashes (TGF), generated by intense electric fields in which the electrons are accelerated to the point of reaching an energy of up to 30 MeV. The link between TLEs and TGFs is one of the scientific questions of the TARANIS mission. Lightning-induced Electron Precipitations (LEP) will also be studied. All these events have associated electromagnetic wave emissions that will be investigated as well. The Atmosphere-Space Interaction Monitor will operate at the same time as TARANIS and will provide complementary observations.

Sun-Synchronous Orbit

1 Payload

175 kilograms

Seosat (Ingenio)

Wiki

Ingenio (or SEOSat/Ingenio) is a Spanish project to produce a satellite capable of providing wide-field imagery (230 60 km × 60 km frames a day) at 2.5 m panchromatic resolution and 10 m colour resolution, from a sun-synchronous polar orbit; it is Spain's first optical imaging satellite. The satellite is part of the Spanish Earth Observation Satellite program.

Sun-Synchronous Orbit

1 Payload

750 kilograms

Rocket

Retired
Vega

Active 2012 to 2024

European Space Agency logo

Manufacturer

ESA

Price

$37.00 million

Rocket

Diameter: 3.025m

Height: 29.9m

Payload to Orbit

LEO: 1,436 kg

Liftoff Thrust

2,200 Kilonewtons

Fairing

Diameter: 2.6m

Height: 7.88m

Stages

4

Launch Site

ELV

Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana, France

Fastest Turnaround

75 days

Stats

Vega


17th

Mission

2nd

Mission of 2020

European Space Agency


280th

Mission

5th

Mission of 2020

2020


93rd

Orbital launch attempt