Rocket Lab isn’t just known for being an aerospace company with endless inspiration for finding musically worthy names for its missions. For the fortieth, called “We Love the Nightlife” succeeding “Baby Come Back”, a sizeable exercise ended in success for the company and its shareholders: the reuse of an engine on the main booster.
After the forty missions carried out from May 25, 2017 to August 24, 2023, Rocket Lab is at the forefront of being able to launch its ultimate test: to be able to equip a launcher with nine reused engines. The mission is the next scheduled but does not yet have a date. If successful, the company will join SpaceX, reusing boosters and their engines, with lower costs for putting into orbit, and getting more customers.
The launch of the rocket on August 24 was carried out on behalf of Capella Space, an American company that develops Earth observation satellites with radars capable of piercing clouds and not being bothered by the darkness of the night. The first satellite launched, of the four planned with Rocket Lab, will evolve at an altitude of 640 kilometers and is called Acadia.
Rocket Lab’s launcher is called Electron, and with a full reuse plan for its launch module it will be able to further lower the cost of shipping satellites for the company’s customers. To date, Rocket Lab is not yet in direct competition with SpaceX. It actually offers light launchers capable of sending loads of 300 kilos maximum, against 22 tonnes for the Falcon 9, recalls a journalist from the Swiss daily The weather.
Rocket Lab, its next Neutron rocket and NASA
Like the mission name “Make It Rain,” Rocket Lab hasn’t just had good weather on its ascent. To find a place in a market that will soon experience increased competition, it had to aim higher than low orbit, and work with NASA to obtain missions for Artemis.
The return of human spaceflight to the Moon has enabled Rocket Lab to send Capstone’s CubeSat (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) in 2022 into orbit around our natural satellite. For this, the company used its Electron launcher, equipped with the Lunar Photon stage, to prove its ability to mark an elliptical orbit and reach the star so coveted by space companies, on which India has just arise.
“The main purpose of CAPSTONE is to test and verify the calculated orbital stability of a near-rectilinear orbit around the Moon, the same orbit as that planned for Gateway. NASA’s Gateway is a small space station that will orbit the Moon to allow astronauts access to the lunar surface”Rocket Lab explained last year about its mission in collaboration with the American Space Agency.
For 2024, Rocket Lab is counting on the first test of its new launcher called Neutron. A big step forward for the company with such a machine, which would increase to a payload of 13 tonnes. In the second quarter of 2023, the company indicated in its report that it had started earthworks for the launch pad, and made significant progress.
In financial terms, moreover, since Capstone, the company has operated twice more with NASA, notably within the framework of the TROPICS mission. And thanks to an auction of the Virgin Orbit split, Rocket Lab says it was able to secure assets and production space “at advantageous prices, allowing significant savings and an acceleration of the Neutron production schedule”.
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