The 16th Electron launch in November 2020, when the company recovered the rocket after it splashed for the first time.
Rocket Laboratory
The next mission for the small launch leader, Rocket Lab, will have its second attempt to repair an Electron rocket amplifier after it was launched by splashing it into the sea.
The company is working on reusing its rockets, just as SpaceX’s Elon Musk is currently doing.
“Wherever we try to get, it’s so we can literally catch this thing and then repeat it,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck told CNBC. “Start, catch, repeat.”
The next mission, its 20th to date, is expected to be launched in May from the company’s private facility in New Zealand. The main objective of the mission is to deploy two satellites in orbit for BlackSky.
Beck’s company wants againcover the boosters so that it can launch more frequently, while also reducing the cost of each mission.
But Rocket Lab’s approach to repairing its boosters differs from SpaceX, which uses the rocket’s engines to slow down during re-entry and uses wide legs to land on large cushions.
Instead, Rocket Lab is testing a technology that Beck calls an ‘aero thermal retarder’ – which uses the atmosphere to slow down the rocket. After reaching space, Rocket Lab’s on-board computer re-introduces the booster – where it moves up to eight times the speed of sound and is subject to heat of more than 4,350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then put a parachute from the top of the booster to slow it down and, like its first recovery in November, splash down into the Pacific Ocean.
The splashdown is expected to occur about 400 kilometers from the launch site, where a Rocket Lab ship will then create it out of the water. Beck said this is the second of three planned repairs before the company goes to its full reuse plan: picking up the booster with its parachute from the air with a helicopter.
The Electron rocket launcher for the company’s 20th launch and second attempt at recovery.
Rocket Laboratory
Rocket Lab is teaming up with Vector Acquisition, a special procurement company (SPAC), in a deal that values the space company at $ 4.1 billion. The merger is expected to end in the second quarter, when Rocket Lab will list on the Nasdaq and convert the SPAC shares, which are currently trading under the right-wing VACQ, to RKLB as the combined company.
A SPAC is a shell company set up to raise money through an initial public offering to merge with an existing private company and make it public.
Learning from the first detection
Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab, on Twitter
Beck said the Electron amplifier for this next mission would contain an ‘amplified heat shield’, as the heat shield received a real beating during the previous recovery mission ‘during the intense re-entry.
Overall, the rocket amplifier was ‘in a remarkable shape’, and the company now understands the burden on the heat shield better, he added.
Beck said there will be another major upgrade before the third recovery mission.
The external changes are minimal, he noted, and most updates affect the “subtleties around control and management of the thermal charge” on the booster.
Rocket Lab’s goal is to ‘do the minimum possible overhaul’ with the amplifiers repairing it so that it can rotate quickly between launches. The company uses parts from the first Electron booster it recovered, which is now “severely disassembled,” Beck said.
While the booster took a quick dunk in the salt water for several hours, he said Rocket Lab could not yet find any lasting problems with parts he plans to qualify and launch on other rockets.
Once the company has completed all three splashdown tests this year, it will move into the air after recovery efforts.
Rocket Lab has shown that it can fetch a booster with a helicopter during a test last year, which Beck noticed on the first try.
The launch rate increases
Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket has carried more than 100 small satellites over the past few years. The company also built a spacecraft manufacturing business.
Beck’s company has launch facilities in New Zealand and Virginia. The first launch of Rocket Lab from the US has been delayed by revision of regulations and is expected to be completed only later this year.
The additional launch facility will be key, as Rocket Lab said last year that 26 missions for 2021 had been discussed. The fact that both facilities are available gives the company as many as 132 launch opportunities per year.
Last November, Beck said that Rocket Lab had built Electron boosters in less than 30 days, and told CNBC that the company is now up to 26 days – aiming to get a production rate of one rocket every 18 days.
Planning for the larger Neutron rocket
Rocket Lab has also announced plans for a second, larger rocket called Neutron to lift more payloads than its current Electron rocket. The launch market is divided into three sections: small, medium and heavy lift. Neutron will target the medium portion.
Neutron, which is expected to launch for the first time in 2024, will be 131 feet long and can carry as much as 8,000 kilograms to a low Earth orbit. Rocket Lab has not announced how much Neutron is expected to cost per launch.
The company expects Neutron to cost about $ 200 million to develop. The first launch will come from NASA’s Wallops flying facility in Virginia. Rocket Lab plans to build a neutron-specific factory in the region.
Neutron will also have a reusable amplifier, but the new rocket will land on an ocean platform with a propulsive landing. Electron “was always designed to be really, really manufacturable rather than really, really reusable,” Beck said.
Musk, shortly after Rocket Lab announced its plan for Neutron, said the rocket “looks familiar” but that it is “nevertheless the right move”. SpaceX performed several short prototype flight tests as it landed its Falcon 9 rocket amplifier perfectly, which Beck is not sure Rocket Lab will take.
“Whether we see the need for hop tests or not remains to be determined, but our kind of current base is not capable of us,” Beck said.