The European Space Agency has announced that it is targeting 15 November for the return to flight of the grounded Avio-built Vega C launch vehicle.

Vega C was grounded following a failed flight in late 2022. The cause of the failure was initially identified as the material utilized for the throat insert of the vehicle’s Zefiro 40 (Z40) second stage. However, a static fire test conducted in June 2023 to validate the fix also failed. The conclusion after this failure was that the entire Z40 nozzle would need to be redesigned, a process that is currently underway.