Agency

Media invitation to the Live Launch Transmission of Vega VV02 carrying Proba-V

25/04/2013 706 views 1 likes

ESA / Space in Member States / The Netherlands

All media are hereby cordially invited to attend the Live Launch Transmission event of ESA's Vega VV02 launch carrying ESA's Proba-V for Vegetation satellite. The launch transmission event takes place in the early morning of Saturday 4 May in ESA's Redu ground station in Belgium.

The second ever launch of Vega, ESA's newest lightweight launcher, marks a special day for the European Space Agency. The launcher will for the first time deploy several different satellites in different orbits, altitudes and inclinations.

For Belgium, this launch will also be a very special event: Belgium is backing ESA's Proba programme strongly and the Proba-V mission is a particularly important mission. More than 10,000 scientific teams worldwide rely on the Vegetation instrument data that are currently being gathered by the French Spot 5 satellite. Proba-V will take over this role. Vital uses of the Proba-V Vegetation date include day-by-day tracking of extreme weather effects, alerting authorities to crop failures, monitoring inland water resources and tracking the steady spread of deserts and deforestation.

The Proba-V satellite was developed and built in record time by QinetiQ Space to ensure it could become operational in time to cross-calibrate its instrument with Spot 5. In addition Proba-V features many technology demonstration packages - promising European space technologies given an early chance for a try-out in space.

ESA's ground station in Redu, Belgium, plays a crucial role in processing and streamlining the data of the Proba-V satellite and so will the Belgian institute VITO. Therefore it is with great pleasure that we invite you to the centre of Proba-V project coordination, ESA's Redu ground station, to witness the exciting launch of Vega VV02, and to follow the flight until the first signals are received and the mission can be officially declared a success.

Programme

03.30   Doors Open
03.40   Link to live transmission of Launch from Kourou
04.06   Vega VV02 Launch - Post Launch activities follow-up on ESA TV and from the webcam of the Proba Control Centre
06:09   1st signal reception from Svalbard ground station in Norway
09.00   Welcome by Mr Daniele Galardini, Head of ESA Redu Centre
09.30   Address by Mr Jacques Nijskens, BELSPO, The Belgian Federal Science Policy Office
09.50   Address by Mr Benoit Geffroy, ESA Launchers Directorate
10.10   Address by Mrs Bianca Hoersch, ESA Proba-V Mission Manager
10.30   Address by Mr Dirk Vanspeybroeck, VITO, Flemish Institute for Technological Research
11.22   1st signal reception at Redu - Proba-V Celebration Cocktail