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Small launch company Rocket Lab has a big agenda for late 2020, including plans for its first launch from US soil and its first attempt to retrieve a first-stage launch vehicle after launch.
The California-based company, known for its New Zealand launch, is on track to address both goals this year, founder and CEO Peter Beck said in an interview Tuesday.
If Rocket Lab’s first launch from the Mid-Atlantic regional spaceport in Virginia is successful, the company intends to launch regularly from this location.
“We have an agreement to fly out of Virginia 12 times a year, and we hope to fill those slots,” Beck said. “The platform and the integration facility will host several electron launchers simultaneously. Our facility is designed for fast-reaction launches, ”Beck said.
Rocket Lab’s electronic rocket is considered a small vehicle capable of carrying around 660 pounds of payload into orbit.
But along with microelectronics, the size of satellites has shrunk dramatically over the past decade. In the past, many satellites were the size of a van or bus – modern cubesats are roughly the size of a toaster or smaller.
At the next scheduled launch of Rocket Lab on November 15 in New Zealand, 30 mini-satellites will be transported.
Meanwhile, the company has partnered with NASA and the State of Virginia to modernize launch facilities near NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility, approximately 160 miles southeast of Washington DC.
The first launch from Rocket Lab in Virginia will carry a small weather satellite for the US Space Force.
The company is ready for launch, but is waiting for NASA to sign the automatic mission abort software verification, Beck said.
Such software, which is designed to destroy the rocket if it deviates from its course, must be certified for each new launch site it is deployed to, he said.
“The rocket is on the launch pad, ready for launch, and we had our … launch samples,” Beck said.
Rocket Lab intends to use a completely different system for the recovery of its first booster stage than SpaceX, which returns the boosters to liquid fuel launch pads.
Instead, Rocket Lab will return the booster to the atmosphere on a specific orbit. He will then deploy his parachutes, slow down and eventually get caught up by a helicopter.
After testing the parachutes and descent systems multiple times, the company believes any risk to the overall mission is “very, very low,” Beck said.
The first attempt to recover a booster, still planned for 2020, will be on a flight with a paying customer, but none of the systems needed to recover the booster will be activated until the payload is deployed, Beck said.
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