European Vega rocket on its last flight put a satellite into orbit

 Confirming the restoration of Europe's space sovereignty by putting a surveillance satellite into orbit, the Vega rocket successfully completed its final flight after lifting off Wednesday from the Kourou space center in French Guiana.

The rocket was originally scheduled to launch the day before, but Arianespace announced a 24-hour delay "due to electrical problems in the ground connections." The launch finally took place at 22:50 on Wednesday (01:50 GMT on Wednesday), according to an AFP correspondent at the scene.

The Guiana Center announced via the "X" platform that "the last flight of +Vega+ has successfully lifted off from the European spaceport!

The rocket carried the "Sentinel-2C" satellite, part of the European Union's "Copernicus" program, and succeeded in placing it in a sun-synchronous orbit at an altitude of about 775 kilometers, 57 minutes and 27 seconds after lift-off, Arianespace later said via "X".

Sentinel-2C is part of Europe's space-based Earth observation program and will support a wide range of operational applications, including agriculture, water quality monitoring, natural disaster management such as forest fires, earthquakes and floods, and methane emission monitoring.

The Vega mission, named VV24, was the last for the Italian Avio rocket, which entered service in 2012, before the introduction of the improved and more powerful Vega C rocket, which has been suspended since an accident in 2022 that caused the loss of two Airbus satellites.

The head of the French National Center for Space Studies, Philippe Baptiste, told AFP that this flight was "the second part of the restoration of European space and strategic independence".

The success of the first flight of the Ariane 6 rocket in early July, after a four-year delay, was a step towards enabling Europeans to put an end to the "black" year during which the old continent was deprived of access to space.

The re-launch of Europe's rockets is strategic for its space sector in the face of competition from the US company SpaceX, which launches reusable Falcon 9 rockets twice a week.

But optimism remains mixed with caution about the Vega C rocket since the 2022 accident, which occurred at a time when Europe was waiting for the Ariane 6 to come online and could no longer rely on Soyuz rockets after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"I am confident that we will be ready to launch Vega C by the end of November," Tonny Tolker Nielsen, director of space transportation at the European Space Agency, told AFP, adding that the engine design, which had caused several problems, had been "completely rethought" and that recent tests had been crucial.

He assured that "there is no reason why things should not go well" despite "a lot of pressure on Vega C".

The European Space Agency is currently preparing for a second Ariane 6 launch in December, as well as six launches of the rocket and four Vega C launches in 2025, he said.

"We have overcome a rocket crisis of a technical and political nature," Pierre Leonet, research director at the Eurospace consortium of European space companies, told AFP.

"The big question, on the other hand, is who will buy enough launches to allow operators and manufacturers to offer services at a price acceptable to customers and to allow the whole industrial chain to make a profit," he added.

He concluded that among the world powers, Europe is "the smallest customer for launch requirements" and must find its place in a market that has "changed radically".

For his part, Tony Tolker Nielsen of the European Space Agency estimated that it would take "at least ten years" for Europe to compete with the United States in this field.