Brussels, 17/11/2020 (Agence Europe) – During the night of 16–17 November, Arianespace announced the failure of Vega flight VV17. This is the second failure for the small European launcher, which had already experienced setbacks in the summer of 2019 (see EUROPE 12291/21). As a result, the Spanish Earth-observation satellite SEOSAT-Ingenio and the French TARANIS mission to observe ‘sprite’ phenomena (flashes of light extending several hundred kilometres in the thermosphere) have been lost. “We deeply apologise towards our customers”, stated Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israël on Twitter. The specialist press reports that, according to an initial report by experts, the error was reportedly human in origin and not related to the actual design of the launcher. The year 2020 has been an ‘annus horribilis’ for the European launcher industry, which pushed the inauguration ofAriane 6 and Vega C back several months (see EUROPE 12592/34) because of the coronavirus. (PH)