Range operator confirms failure

It appears a deviation in the planned trajectory occurred during or at 2nd stage flight or ignition.

Telemetry lost at T+6:51 with vehicle rapidly dropping before that. Arianespace CEO claims second stage underpressure issue.

Yep confirmed here. Underpressure in the 2nd stage. Either a failure to ignite or an underperform. Either way a launch failure. Apogee was 110km and vehicle impacted Atlantic Ocean shortly after.

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The ground camera says it lit. Remember 2 failures ago, when it burned through the top of the 2nd stage? This is a different stage (wider). But still.

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It looked like it lit, burned a while, then something happened that caused the plume to become much wider and more diffuse, and the stage was either gyrating or tumbling. Maybe a major failure of the nozzle?

That’s what I was thinking. Either they burned through it or the back fell off. Either way they lost command authority and thrust.

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What about the front?

At least they made it to space, although I don't think the satellites were supposed to end up at the bottom of the ocean.

Damn, and with two Pleiades Neo satellites on board.

That sucks a big fat one for commercial earth observation. The Neo's have such great sensors.

This is a good example of why most people think "space" means "orbit".

There's a lot of competition!

The Karmen Line, which is what I was going off of, is arbitrary with some aerodynamic calculations to back it up, it’s much easier to to define what an orbit is rather than where space begins.

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That’s what I’m saying, aside from tourism, testing, and short experiments, suborbital flights aren’t really that useful.

Such as? The only sat that's really close (that I'm aware of) is Worldview-3

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I was just adding on to my previous comment.

Is it possible to retrieve the satellites, or did they burn down?

Not sure if they made it high enough to burn on re-entry, but they are dead anyway. Probably deep under water and in a thousand pieces.

Well, that's sad and expensive.

Very expensive. I hope they were insured.

They have been waiting on launch since May, so this is a huge setback. I mean, luckily there are already 2 in orbit, but planned constellation size is 4.

I wonder if they will replace or just move on to the next thing

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Those things are crispy and useless unfortunately.

Might have been the plume going over the first stage.

> Very expensive. I hope they were insured.

Doubt it. Governments generally self-insure.

It happened about a minute into the second stage burn, and lasted for the remainder of the burn. https://youtu.be/CokbWoYm9w4?t=1103

Ah ok, didn't pick that up

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Probably something like that. You can see the speed start to drop right then, too.

No there isn't. Next generation tech, better than pretty much everything up there.

Ugh people at Airbus gotta be just hurting watching so much work burning up on reentry, lost in sea. Know the weight constraints probably make it impossible, but it sure seems like it would be wise if the cone they were in had a parachute? Have a way to possibly salvage something if not all of it?

No, it would land in the ocean anyways and satellites don't mix with salt water even if they survived intact

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It seems like the third stage separated and ignited normally, and that's attached to the front. Maybe it broke away before that though, the CGI was obviously not an accurate depiction of what was going on.

They are also the ones wanting space industry so particularly here it is a wash Because France wants arianespace to continue and finances both.

Well it’s not supposed to fall off, I can tell you that right now.

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