At 15:30, the Zefiro 9A motor ignited for its final qualification-firing test. The motor took almost two minutes to completely burn its propellant load, during which time engineers and technicians, representatives of Avio, ELV and ESA/IPT waited for the outcome of this important test. The main objectives of the test were to verify the behaviour of the Zefiro 9A motor in a fully flight-representative configuration, to confirm the design performance and to collect information for system studies at stage level. As soon as the test was over, the project team met in order to verify the preliminary results for ballistic performance (pressure and thrust curves) and the thrust vector control behavior. This first analysis confirmed the overall success of the test. After the first qualification test, completed in October of 2008, Tuesday’s firing was the final step in the complete qualification test programme for the Zefiro 9A. This test also completes the overall ground qualification test campaign for all three Vega solid rocket motors. The Zefiro 9A motor, 3.17 metres long with a diameter of 1.92 metres, is loaded with 10 tonnes of solid propellant and forms the third stage motor of the Vega launcher.
Vega is a single-body launcher composed of three solid-propellant stages and a liquid-propellant upper module. It is approximately 30 meters high and weights a total of 137 tons at liftoff. The benchmark for Vega’s in-orbit launch capacity is 1500 kg into a 700 km-altitude polar orbit used by many scientific and Earth observation missions. Vega, together with the mid-class Soyuz launcher, will ensure that a full range of launch services will be available for Europe, thereby allowing optimized mission planning based on the exact performance required in each case for the lowest cost.
