The loss of the Spanish satellite ingenio

The Spanish satellite SEOSAT-Ingenio, led by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, was the largest space project ever undertaken by the Spanish aerospace industry through the European Space Agency (ESA). It was supposed to be an observation satellite that would have been able to take high resolution photographs with multiple applications in cartography, agriculture control, urban development or monitoring natural disasters.

The SEOSAT-Ingenio was launched inside the Vega VV17 rocket together with the French satellite Taranis from the European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, last November 17 at 02:52 (Spanish peninsula time). However, 8 minutes after the launch, the rocket deviated from its trajectory and got lost, resulting in the loss of the mission. The most likely assumption is that the rocket re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere and fell completely destroyed somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

The result was 200 Million EUR – the total cost of the mission – and more than 10 years of work completely wasted. According to the French company Arianespace, responsible for the rocket, the deviation was caused, at first sight, by a “human error” in the crossover of two cables during the production stage of the rocket and not by a design issue. However, ESA has already announced the formation of an investigation commission to clarify the fail.

In addition, the SEOSAT-Ingenio was not insured: According to ESA, an insurance that covers the possible loss of the mission is not included in institutional space missions. “This is common in this kind of space missions, and not even agencies like NASA insure their projects”, states Joseph Aschbacher, the head of the ESA’s Earth Observation program. “There are not standard insurances” to do it, “it requires negotiation” and they prefer to invest the insurance cost (about 20-50% of what the satellite costs) into R+D.

However, not everything is bad news: The Spanish Minister of Science and former astronaut Pedro Duque said on Twitter: “Despite the failure of the mission, this project has allowed the Spanish industry to show its ability to develop complete space systems and win new contracts like the one recently signed for the LSTM mission”. Moreover, according to Eva Vega, the Director of Space Programs of the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA) “It was not a Spanish technology problem, what went wrong was the launcher, and that is French and Italian technology”. She also pointed out that “we face the future now with two alternatives: Resume the Ingenio project or start a new, more modern and advanced one”.

Sources: ABC, Vozpópuli, La Opinión de Zamora