Avio launches pair of climate monitoring European spacecraft to study plants, oceans and atmospheric changes

An Avio Vega-C rocket zipped off the launch pad Monday night from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. This was the eighth launch to date of the 34.8-meter-tall (114.2 ft.) rocket and the second of 2026. Onboard the launch with the designation VV30 were two spacecraft: the ocean- and atmosphere-monitoring Copernicus Sentinel-3C, managed by the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), and the plant health-monitoring Fluorescence Explorer (FLEX), managed by the European Space Agency (ESA). More

(Source: SpaceFlight Now - Sep 17)