Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Rocket Lab to attempt first booster recovery during its next mission

The American company Rocket Lab has revealed that it will attempt to recover the first stage of its Electron rocket during its next mission, the ‘Return to Sender’ launch, scheduled for lift-off in mid-November. The test will see Rocket Lab attempt to bring Electron’s first stage back to Earth under a parachute system for a controlled water landing before collection by a recovery vessel.

Rocket Lab’s 16th Electron launch, the ‘Return to Sender’ mission, will lift-off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula. The mission will see Electron deploy 30 payloads for a range of small satellite customers to a 500km sun-synchronous orbit, with the recovery attempt a secondary objective of the launch.

Rocket Lab stated last summer that, like SpaceX, it had plans to start reusing its rockets, something that would significantly reduce the cost of rocket launches. Unlike SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets, which slow its descent and land vertically on land or one of SpaceX’s drone ships at sea, Rocket Lab has planned to let the Electron rocket’s rocket steps single down to the ground in a parachute when it has performed its work.

It should be noted that there is a big difference in size between the Rocket Labs Electron rocket, which is 17 meters high, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which is 70 meters high. Electron is designed to give small satellites dedicated rides to orbit. The rocket can loft about 300 kilograms of payload to low Earth orbit on each roughly $7 million lift-offs.

Image above is an illustration of how Rocket Labs has intended to make Electron's rocket stage land
Image above is an illustration of how Rocket Labs has intended to make Electron’s rocket stage land. Credit: Rocket Lab

The image above is an illustration of how Rocket Labs has intended to make Electron’s rocket stage land somewhere in the ocean after it launched from Rocket Labs rocket base in New Zealand.

Recovering the first stage of a small launch vehicle is uncharted territory. What we’re trying to achieve with Electron is an incredibly difficult and complex challenge, but one we’re willing to pursue to further boost launch cadence and deliver even more frequent launch opportunities to small satellite operators,” says Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder, and CEO. “Bringing a whole first stage back intact is the ultimate goal, but success for this mission is really about gaining more data, particularly on the drogue and parachute deployment system. Regardless of the condition, the stage comes back in; we’ll learn a great deal from this test and use it to iterate forward for the next attempt.”

If the rocket recovery program is successful, Electron will become the first and only reusable orbital-class small launch system in operation.