Arianespace has announced that preparations for its first Vega launch of 2020 are progressing, after the company was able to restart its activities at the Guiana space centre in Kourou, French Guiana. The VV16/SSMS mission is due to begin its Launch Readiness Review (LRR) on 17 June from the centre's Vega Launch Complex (SLV). This represents the Proof of Concept (PoC) flight of the new Small Spacecraft Mission Service (SSMS), which will launch 53 satellites into orbit for 21 different customers, including seven microsatellites (15-150 kg) and 46 smaller CubeSats.
The forthcoming POC flight has been partially financed by the European Union. The European Space Agency (ESA) funded the SSMS hardware development, commissioning space equipment manufacturer Avio to produce the 'satellite dispenser', which will manage the deployment of the cargo once the rocket is outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
Based on a rideshare concept, SSMS enables multiple commercial and institutional customers to share payload capacity and reduce launch costs. Now part of Arianespace's commercial offering, it has been developed to address the sub-segment of nano- and micro-satellites.
