Vega to launch four cubesats for ESA and Unseenlab

Athens, 12 August 2021. – Arianespace is planning to launch the optical observation satellite Pléiades Neo 4 and four other passengers on a Vega rocket on 16 August, the company said.

Pléiades Neo 4 is the second very high-resolution satellite part of the new Airbus Defence and Space’s Earth Observation constellation.

Vega Flight 19 (VV19) will also deploy four scientific cubists: three to the benefit of the European Space Agency (ESA) – Ledsat, Radcube and Sunstorm – and one for the French start-up Unseenlabs, Arianespace said.

Pléiades Neo 4, fully funded and manufactured by its operator Airbus, is the second out of four satellites of the Pléiades Neo constellation, the first one having been successfully orbited by Vega on 18 April 2021.

Ledsat is an educational project to investigate the performances of a technology based on Light Emitting Diodes for the optical stand-alone low-Earth orbit satellites tracking.

Radcube is a cubesat to demonstrate miniaturized instrument technologies that measure in-situ the space radiation and magnetic field environment for space weather monitoring purposes.

Sunstorm is a cubesat with an innovative solar X-ray spectrometer to detect the X-ray pulses produced by coronal mass ejections – massive eruptions of many millions of tons of material from the Sun’s surface, Arianespace said.

Unseenlabs´s BRO-4 is part of Unseenlab´s Breizh Reconnaissance Orbiter (BRO) constellation, a spectrum monitoring and electromagnetic intelligence service for maritime surveillance.