Proposals for the Vega Evolution or Vega E launch vehicle were first announced in 2012 following the maiden launch of Vega. One of the main drivers behind the project was a desire to eliminate the vehicle’s reliance on the Ukrainian-built RD-843 rocket engine with what would become the M10, a methalox upper stage engine capable of multiple restarts.
When Vega E was first being proposed, the M10 project was referred to as LM10-MIRA and was a collaborative effort between Avio and Russia’s Konstruktorskoe Buro Khimavtomatiki (KBKhA). The partnership between the two was concluded in 2014, with Avio continuing the development of the engine. According to Avio, however, nothing in the M10 engine as it exists today is Russian.
In addition to marking the end of the M10 collaboration with KBKhA, 2014 would also mark a peculiar turning point for Vega E. You see, ESA was in the process of finalizing the design for the Ariane 6, a decision that was made at a ministerial-level council meeting later that year. The design was modular and could be launched in a two or four-booster configuration. To reduce, or maybe it would be more apt to say disguise, development, and production costs of Ariane 6, the vehicle would share a common booster with the Vega family of launch vehicles which had been in the market for a bigger booster for its proposed Vega-E launch vehicle. There was a problem with this arrangement, though.
The M10 engine and the stage it would power wouldn’t be ready in time for Vega E to make use of the booster when it became available. Initially, Ariane 6, powered by the common-core boosters was set to be debuted as early as late 2019, and at that time, Vega E wasn’t expected until 2024 at the earliest.
To ensure that Avio could utilise the booster for its Vega vehicles and to boost the performance of Vega in a rapidly evolving market, a compromise was struck. At the same late 2014 ministerial-level council meeting that saw the approval of the Ariane 6 design, the design for Vega-C is approved. The rocket would utilise the new P120C booster (the “C” standing for common) and the Zefiro-40 second stage. From there upwards, it was basically a Vega rocket retaining the Zefiro-9 third stage with a slightly larger AVUM upper stage and fairing. When funding for the vehicle was approved in 2015, a total of 225 million euros of Vega’s budget was dedicated to the development of the P120C boosters. When this decision was made, Vega-C was set to be introduced as early as 2018.
In 2017, the Vega C debut had slipped to 2019, and ESA could no longer hold off on the progress of Vega E. The agency awarded 53 million euros in funding to Avio to jumpstart the project’s development. From that point on, both Vega-C and Vega-E would be worked on concurrently with Vega-E set to debut in 2024. This funding came with the admission that Vega-C had been a compromise with ESA officials stating that the agency could not meet both short-term and long-term goals with one rocket.
As the world sat unaware of what was to come in early 2019, the Vega C debut slipped to 2020. According to Avio, the change was made to prioritize its 2019 Vega launch manifest over the original plan for the Vega C debut. This, of course, would be followed by the rise of a global pandemic later that year that would put much of Avio’s operations on ice, including the debut of the Vega C launch vehicle and the development of Vega E. It would also push out Vega launches. This would in turn cause headaches for ESA as the agency had to transition some of the payloads destined for Vega to Vega C to ensure the delayed launch manifest did not push out the debut of Vega C even further.
With worldwide vaccinations slowly starting to increase, in July 2021, ESA looked to push past pandemic delays and again jumpstart the Vega E project signing a €118.8 million contract with Avio for the vehicle’s development. This is the current tranche of funding driving the Vega E project as ESA heads into a pivotal ministerial-level meeting later this year.
Vega-C now appears to be close to taking to the skies with all four of the rocket’s stages stacked and awaiting its payload. However, the project has slipped so far that the time between the debut of Vega-C and the introduction of Vega-E could be as little as four years, with the maiden Vega E flight currently set for the middle of 2026. It does leave one questioning if, in hindsight, it would have been better to pour funding and focus into Vega-E instead of disguising funding for Ariane 6 in the books of Vega.
