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Launch provider Rocket Lab has a mission today – codenamed “Return to Sender”, it is the company’s sixteenth launch and will carry, among other things, a payload that will demonstrate technology to help deorbit satellites so sure. It has a side mission that is potentially more important to Rocket Lab and launch activity in general, however: an attempt to recover the first stage booster used in flight. The launch is currently scheduled for 8:44 pm EST (5:44 pm PST) and the webcast above will start 30 minutes earlier.
This is the first time Rocket Lab will attempt to retrieve one of the early stages of its launch vehicle, and it’s significant in part because the company never intended to. Rocket Lab’s Electron was designed as a fully expendable launch vehicle, an intentionally different approach from other launch vendors like SpaceX, which focused on creating a smaller launch aircraft that could be built more quickly and launched. more economically, but which sacrificed reusability as an exchange. turned off.
That all changed with last year’s surprise announcement that Rocket Lab would aim to introduce partial reusability into its existing system. Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck explained during his presentation describing the reusability system that would not involve a propulsive landing, like the type used by SpaceX, but would instead use a navigation and guidance system to reorient the booster so that survive – enter through an angled drop into Earth’s atmosphere, then deploy a parachute to slow it to the point where it could be captured by a helicopter and transported back to earth.
Today’s recovery attempt will not be a full test of that system as described; instead, it will see the first stage attempt to survive the reentry and then deploy its parachute, at which point it will hopefully float towards the ocean, from which Rocket Lab will then attempt to fetch it. The helicopter capture component, which Rocket Lab demonstrated in a previous partial test, will not be part of today’s activities.
The recovery attempt will be what most observers focus on today, but this mission has 30 total satellite payloads and will carry a 3D printed gnome from Valve’s Gabe Newell, which is a tech demo for new manufacturing techniques with potential space applications. .
As a bonus, Rocket Lab is also donating $ 1 for each viewer of their live-streaming feed over to the pediatric intensive care unit at the Starship Foundation of New Zealand, so just by watching a really cool rocket launch, you’ll be fine in the too. world. It’s at 8:44 pm EST (5:44 pm PST) via the YouTube stream embedded at the top of this post, and they will begin live coverage around 8:14 pm EST (5:14 pm PST).
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