The second flight of the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) small satellite launch rocket, Vega, currently scheduled for April, will be supported by a mobile telemetry tracking station and two specialists from South Africa’s Denel Overberg Test Range (OTR).

The OTR is situated near Bredasdorp, in the Western Cape province. The mobile station is being deployed to French Guiana, in the north east of South America, which is the location of ESA’s space launch centre. It will be used to strengthen ESA’s coverage of the telemetry from the rocket following its launch.
The South African telemetry experts taking part in the mission are Deon van der Hoven and Leon Korkie. They will assemble and operate the mobile telemetry station at the ESA centre, known as ‘Europe’s spaceport’, and which is located in the district of Kourou, just 500 km north of the equator. Once the station has been set up, it will be integrated with the Kourou telemetry system and take part in the prelaunch qualification of the telemetry network. It and they will then support the actual launch, receiving telemetry from the Vega during the first phase of its launch – until it disappears over the horizon from Kourou.
“We are very proud of our team that provides a reliable and responsive service to international clients,” said Denel OTR project manager Japie Venter. This will be the fourth European launch that the South African facility has supported, under a five year contract signed in 2010 with the French National Space Studies Centre (better known as CNES and that country’s space agency), which operates Kourou.
Among ESA launches sup-ported by the Denel OTR mobile telemetry station under its contract with CNES is that of the 20 t Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) (robot cargo spacecraft) Johannes Kepler, which carried supplies to the International Space Station in February 2011. For this, the mobile station was deployed to New Zealand. Under a previous agreement, the mobile station was also deployed in New Zealand in 2008 to support the launch of the first ATV, the Jules Verne.
The South African facility’s mobile telemetry station has also provided launch telemetry support to the US National Aeronautics and Space Admin-istration since 2003. Denel OTR also has a 10 m diameter dish fixed tracking station, located near the southernmost tip of Africa (which is Cape Agulhas), which can also be used for launch support and tracking, telemetry and command functions.

The complex is a compre-hensive test facility, with fully integrated systems and capable of planning, managing and executing air, sea-launched and ground-launched flight tests, or any combination of these. Its instrumentation suite is ISO 9001:2008 certified. Denel OTR can provide turnkey services, including target ser-vices and security. Set up in the mid-1980s to meet South Africa’s needs, today its also serves international clients, notably the German Air Force (Luftwaffe).
ESA’s Vega rocket is a new launch vehicle, specifically designed to place smaller satellites – in the mass range of 300 kg to 2 000 kg – into low earth and polar orbits, for earth observation and scientific missions. Unusually for a small rocket, Vega can carry multiple payloads. The rocket’s first launch, made in February last year, was described by ESA as a “flawless qualification flight”. Vega is 30 m tall, has a diameter of 3 m, a payload of 1.5 t and launch mass of 137 t. It has three solid-fuel stages, plus a liquid-fuelled fourth stage which is used for attitude and orbit control and to release the satellite(s).