ESA - launchers: ESA's Future Launcher Preparatory Programme (FLPP) is focusing on the preparation of a Next Generation Launcher (NGL)to be operational around 2020
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Final launch of Ariane 5 GS completes busy year
19 December 2009
On 18 December 2009, an Ariane 5 GS launcher lifted off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on a journey to place the French military reconnaissance satellite Helios-2B into Sun-synchronous polar orbit. Flight V193 was the seventh Ariane 5 launch of 2009 and used the last of the GS variant of the launcher.
Vega
Main Data
Vega
Height
30 m
Diameter
3 m
Liftoff mass
137 tonnes
Payload mass*
1500 kg
Although there is a growing tendency for satellites to become larger, there is still a need for a small launcher to place 300 to 2000 kg satellites, economically, into the polar and low-Earth orbits used for many scientific and Earth observation missions.
Europe’s answer to these needs is Vega, named after the second brightest star in the northern hemisphere. Vega will make access to space easier, quicker and cheaper.
Costs are being kept to a minimum by using advanced low-cost technologies and by introducing an optimised synergy with existing production facilities used for Ariane launchers.
Vega has been designed as a single body launcher with three solid propulsion stages and an additional liquid propulsion upper module used for attitude and orbit control, and satellite release. Unlike most small launchers, Vega will be able to place multiple payloads into orbit.
Development of the Vega launcher started in 1998. The first launch is planned for late in 2009 from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana where the Ariane 1 launch facilities are being adapted for its use.
ESA Columbus laboratory - ISS (international space station )
Europe's laboratory on the International Space Station
Biolab (artist's impression). Biolab is a facility designed to support biological experiments on micro-organisms, cells, tissue cultures, small plants and small invertebrates. The major objective of performing Life Sciences experiments in space is to identify the role that weightlessness plays at all levels of an organism, from the effects on a single cell up to a complex organism including humans. The Biolab facility will be launched inside the European Columbus laboratory.
The Columbus external facilities, Solar and EuTEF, are prepared to be placed into the Shuttle's payload canister at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Solar and EuTEF are attached to an ICC-lite. This structure has since been placed inside Space Shuttle Atlantis' cargo bay together with the European Columbus laboratory. Atlantis is targeted for launch to the International Space Station on 6 December 2007. In orbit, once Columbus has been attached to the Station's Harmony module, Solar and EuTEF will be attached to the exterior of Columbus
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