Upper stage failure

August 22, 2014: a Fregat stage drops the Galileo satellites Doresa and Milena into an unusable elliptical orbit after a hydrazine line froze. The upper stage is the one that, once the atmosphere has been crossed, gives the payload its final velocity and orbit, often through several burns separated by long ballistic coasts. It accounts for a large share of launch failures, for three compounding reasons. It operates in vacuum and cold, with no possibility of full ground testing. It must reignite after a wait that testing reproduces poorly. And its failure comes too late for any range safety procedure to protect the payload. In insurance terms this profile produces the costliest configuration: a total loss occurring after every visibly dangerous phase has been passed, which makes the event both rare and without gradation. Contractual characterization is straightforward by contrast. The launch policy responds without argument once separation has not occurred or the orbit reached will not support the mission. The debate then shifts to the relaunch clause and to the anomaly investigation that governs the vehicle's return to flight.