Highlights and liftoff of Vega-C flight VV27 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, at 23:03 native time on 25 July (03:03 BST/04:03 CEST on 26 July).
Flight VV27 was operated by Arianespace and launched Airbus’s 4 CO3D satellites and the French house company CNES MicroCarb mission.
The 4 small satellites within the CO3D constellation (an abbreviation of the French ‘Constellation Optique en 3D’) are set to map the globe in three dimensions from low Earth orbit, to serve private and non-private sector wants.
MicroCarb is designed to map sources and sinks of carbon dioxide on a worldwide scale. ESA coordinated and procured the launch of MicroCarb on behalf of the European Fee, as a part of its In-Orbit Demonstration / In-Orbit Validation (IOD/IOV) programme.
