PARIS — Pushing the limits of a six-day launch window, the European Space Agency (ESA) has shifted the debut of its new Vega rocket to Feb. 13 from Feb. 9, allowing ample time to prepare the flight-qualification campaign.

ESA says Vega’s flight-readiness review board met Feb. 2 to evaluate mission-preparation status and plans for the final days of the campaign. The Vega will lift off from Europe’s Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.

“In fact there is no delay,” ESA spokeswoman Brigitte Kolmsee says, explaining that within Vega’s Feb. 9-14 launch window, Feb. 9 was a working date.

“It was decided, in order to allow a comfortable completion of operations and parallel control activities, to hold the Launch Readiness Review on 9 February and to schedule the launch date for 13 February, leaving some margin should any action be necessary following the launch readiness review,” Kolmsee says.

On Feb. 1, ESA Launch Director Antonio Fabrizi said Vega campaign preparations were going well and that he was confident ESA would execute the mission by mid-February, even if it slipped from the initial Feb. 9 target.

Slated to lift off during a 2-hr. window that starts at 7 a.m. local time Feb. 13, the mission aims to qualify the overall Vega system, including the rocket, its launch infrastructure and operations. Vega is set to carry a payload comprising nine spacecraft, including Italy’s Lares (Laser Relativity Satellite), the University of Bologne’s small AlmaSat-1 technology microsatellite demonstrator and seven cubesats developed by university students.

If the launch is delayed beyond mid-February, however, Vega’s debut could slip at least a month, assuming a successful March 9 launch of ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to the International Space Station atop an Ariane 5 rocket, which uses the same downrange tracking assets needed for Vega.

“If we don’t launch by mid-February, since later on we have a commitment to launch the ATV, docking with the station and so on, Vega will be immediately after the launch of the ATV,” Fabrizi says.