Rocket Lab first tested its parachute system on a live repeater

On Thursday, during its sixth mission of the year, New Zealand’s Rocket Lab successfully launched argo of 30 cubic satellites over a 500 km-wide span in low Earth orbit. More importantly, this launch served as the first live test of the first-stage recovery parachute system, a crucial step in the company’s quest to evolve the Electron into a reusable rocket.

The future launch took off from Rocket Lab’s Complex 1 site on the Mahia Peninsula. The parachute test itself, dubbed the Return to Sender mission, follows previous tests held in May when the company launched a dummy rocket equipped with a parachute and loaded with sensors from an 8,000-foot helicopter only to be captured by a second helicopter at 3,000 feet below. And while this test saw the booster stage splash down for a landing and recovery in the water, the company plans to continue tearing them out of the sky once the system is fully developed.

“We basically simulated the highest load case, where we drop a fully weighted dummy stage from the sky and accelerate it to the highest load point and then open the wing,” said Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab, during a corporate webcast in August.

Two and a half minutes and 80 vertical kilometers after launch on Thursday, the two stages of the Electron separated with the second stage laden with cargo continuing its journey into orbit as the first stage shuts down and plummets down into the shaft. gravitational. To ensure the safety of the cargo in the second phase, the two portions of the rocket operate independently, Beck explained, including the guidance and reaction control systems. However, even though the first stage has glided smoothly to Earth, the second will travel at thousands of kilometers per hour, too fast to recover. Instead, after releasing its payload, the second stage traverses a highly elliptical orbit around the planet for about four weeks before slipping into a re-entry trajectory and burning into the atmosphere.

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As you coast, the first stage reaction control system emits puffs of gas to reorient the booster 180 degrees to the other side, the ideal angle for re-entry and exposing the vehicle’s heat shield. When it loses its fiery atmosphere cloak, the first stage will travel at speeds below Mach 2 and deploy its drogue parachute before firing from its main parachute a few kilometers above the water. Once the booster rocket has dropped safely, a salvage ship will rush to pick it up before it sinks and tow it ashore for inspection and analysis.

“If we can get one back to the factory, we’ll see what we have. It could be something in great condition, or it could be something in very bad condition, ”Beck told Engadget. “There is no doubt that there will be a huge number of changes that we will be able to make to make the system truly viable.” Once the team concludes its analysis, understands the limitations of the system, and everything looks fine, Rocket Lab’s next step will attempt a mid-air recovery using a live first-stage helicopter and rocket. No date has yet been set for that test.

Beck opted for the helicopter-based recovery process because “I really like helicopters,” he joked. The real reason is that due to the electron’s small size, it cannot contain the required amount of fuel and reaction mass needed to stabilize as SpaceX’s first stage does. “There’s just not enough headroom for anything for him to land on his own,” Beck said. As such, he continued, to slow down the booster sufficiently on re-entry, “you have to let the atmosphere do the work for you in terms of washing speed.” Having a second backup helicopter ready to swoop down if the main plane is unable to capture will further ensure the rocket never gets its fairings wet.

Overall, Rocket Lab’s Electron is a tiny spacecraft. Just 57 feet tall, the Electron is overwhelmed by SpaceX’s 229-foot tall Falcon 9. Of course the difference is that the Falcon is tasked with delivering humans to the ISS while the Electron is designed to carry loads of 500 pounds of cubesats in LEO. Obviously her small stature comes with a price to match. While you’d have to drop as low as $ 62 million ($ 70 million more if you’re Yusaku Maezawa) to get Elon Musk’s company to transport you to space, each Rocket Lab launch costs a paltry $ 5 million to take off.

Another advantage of the electron size is that the craft can be built relatively quickly compared to its wider competition. Sure, it still takes around 400 hours of work to complete, but since 2019 this figure has been falling. Before last year, the fabrication and preparation of the various carbon fiber components that go into an Electron had to be done by hand, a laborious and tedious task. However, the addition of an automated fabrication system that year, dubbed “Rosie the Robot,” can mine every piece of carbon fiber needed, ready to be assembled in half a day.

“It takes every carbon composite component from Electron and effectively processes all of those components so they are ready for final assembly,” said Beck. News from space in 2019. “We can process a full electron now in 12 hours.” Of course, there is still a lot of work to be done from there, including assembly, avionics, and electronics installation; in addition to stress tests, structural and environmental; not to mention the in-house construction of both the first-stage Rutherford engine and the second-stage Curie engine, as well as obtaining the necessary federal flight certifications. “The engines represent a huge part of the cost,” Beck pointed out, making up about 70 percent of the rocket’s production requirements.

The Electron didn’t really start out as a reusable launch system. The first models were designed for single use, but “once we started flying it, we got a better understanding of the vehicle,” Beck said, and this understanding led the team to study a reusable retrofit for the existing design. “I don’t think that would have affected the design, even if we had incorporated it on day one. We would have pretty much ended up in the same place we are now.”

“Having a low cost production method [Electrons] it’s a great place to be, “Beck continued.” But reusing something cheap again is really something. “

Looking ahead, Rocket Lab is working to further establish itself as a space launch company specializing in delivering cubic satellites to LEO. But this nascent industry is rapidly evolving. Beck’s company had its products in orbit within three years of the company’s founding, so looking forward five to ten years can be a challenge, he noted. “I think the space industry will look very different, or I certainly hope it does,” concluded Beck. “There are a lot of really exciting companies that also have to prove themselves. I think this is a really exciting time. “