Peter Beck, the founder and CEO of California-based Rocket Lab, said the U.S. Space Force will be able to take advantage of the company’s reusable rockets or new ones, as Rocket Lab moves toward its first recovery of the first stage of an Electron rocket during its next mission, the ‘Return to Sender’ launch, scheduled for lift-off in mid-November.
“Ultimately, we’ll always do what the customer wishes so if the Space Force is happy to fly a reused vehicle, then we’re happy to do that, but ultimately, if they wish to have a new vehicle every time, we’re pushing a vehicle off the production line every 30 days,” Beck told reporters in a conference call on Nov. 4. “Either way, whatever the customer wishes, we’re happy to go either way.”
The mid-November test at Launch Complex-1 (LC-1) on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula 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.
The test will mark Rocket Lab’s 16th Electron launch and the first time Rocket Lab has attempted to recover a stage after launch–what the company called a major milestone in its pursuit to make Electron a reusable rocket “to support an increased launch cadence for small satellite missions.”
Rocket Lab has been preparing a launch of the Space Force’s classified STP-27RM mission, an experimental, research-and-development micro-satellite, from the Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 (LC-2) on Wallops Island, Va. Rocket Lab had planned the launch for spring of this year, but COVID-19 has contributed to launch delays.
The STP-27M mission would be Rocket Lab’s first for the Space Force.
Rocket Lab opened LC-2 at the Wallops Island Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) last December (Defense Daily, Dec. 12, 2019).
Concerning the upcoming 16th Electron launch to demonstrate reusability, “the plan is to work through all of the initial recovery that’s in development down at LC-1 because that’s a much easier range,” Beck said. “But once we get it all sorted, then there’s absolutely no reason why we wouldn’t bring it to LC-2 as well. It’s just slightly easier to do it on our own private range [LC-1] first.”
The 16th Electron launch is to feature the deployment of 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 said.
“Recovering the first stage of a small launch vehicle is uncharted territory,” per Beck. “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…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.”
Rocket Lab focuses on “responsive space,” the rapid-launch of small and cube satellites as opposed to the costly, time consuming launch of traditional military satellites. Such “responsive space” may see a significant demand from Space Force. The Electron’s advertised launch cost is $6 million.
The Electron is a two-stage rocket, with an optional third, for launching small satellites and cube satellites into sun-synchronous orbit and low earth orbit. Rocket Lab has said that the Electron is the first orbital class rocket to use electric-pump-fed engines, powered by nine Rutherford engines on the first stage.
Rocket Lab said that its work on the recovery program began early last year and that the ‘Return to Sender’ recovery attempt follows a series of successful tests of recovery and hardware systems over the past 18 months.
“If Rocket Lab’s recovery program is successful, Electron would become the first and only reusable orbital-class small launch system in operation,” the company said.