Rocket Lab says the recovered booster is “in good condition”, some parts will fly again

Rocket Lab successfully launched its “Return to Sender” mission 10 days ago. So, for the first time, the company attempted to retrieve the Electron booster first stage from the ocean after this launch and now Rocket Lab has provided a preliminary assessment of the vehicle’s condition.

In summary, the company said in an update on its website: “We couldn’t have asked for a better result than our first recovery attempt and the team is thrilled.” The rocket is back in such good condition, the company added: “We will retrain and relaunch some components.”

The November 20 flight marked the first time Rocket Lab fished an Electron out of the Pacific Ocean. The rocket was collected in the waters off the coast of New Zealand, where the small booster starts. Founder Peter Beck said the company wanted to assess the health of the first stage – and make the necessary changes to the heat shield and flight software – before moving on to the final stage of capturing the Electron rocket in mid-air, with a helicopter.

Although they had conducted a series of tests prior to this mission, the company’s engineers were not entirely sure what they would recover after the Electron rocket experienced temperatures above 2,400 ° C and speeds of 2.35 km / s during the trip. its descent.

To accommodate this turbulent environment as Electron screamed through the atmosphere again, Rocket Lab added Reaction Control System thrusters to reorient the first stage for reentry. A parachute system was also added to slow its descent into the atmosphere.

So how did the rocket’s heat shield withstand these conditions?

“The stage held up very well,” the company said. “The carbon composite structure was completely intact. As expected, the heat shield on the base of the stage suffered some heat damage on re-entry. It was never designed for this load case, but before strengthening the heat shield we wanted to see how much heat it might take unchanged. With a large amount of data at the moment, our team has already started working on updates for future recovery missions. “

What the release doesn’t say is how well the rocket’s engine section, with its nine Rutherford engines, performed on reentry. Nor has the company released photos of the engine section itself. This suggests that there is still a lot of work to be done to secure this area on reentry.

“The data is great”

However, it seems likely that Rocket Lab will get there. Company engineers are now inspecting and analyzing “every inch” of the recovered first stage so they can refine its recovery systems before the next attempt. This will not happen at the next launch of Rocket Lab, the “Owl’s Night Begins” mission for Synspective, a Japanese Earth imaging company, due to launch on December 12th.

Rather, Rocket Lab says it will wait to launch another recovery mission in early 2021. It won’t even attempt a helicopter recovery this time. The goal is to collect more data. “A dataset is great, but we’re a conservative group and we want to validate everything a second time before moving on to the next step of recovery,” the company said.

By recovering and relaunching the first stage of a vertically launched rocket, Rocket Lab is looking to become only the second company to do so, following the example of SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. Rocket Lab has now carried out 16 Electron missions. In December 2015, SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket for the first time on its 20th launch of a Falcon 9 rocket.

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