An electron booster from the New Zealand and the US company startup, Rocket Lab, that was carrying two commercial satellites failed to reach orbit on May 15 after it suffered an anomaly just minutes after liftoff.
Rocket Lab Lost Two Satellites
The launch failure happened less than three minutes after the launch from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula, and just after the Electron's two stages separated.
Two Earth-observing satellites for the company BlackSky, their flight arranged by the firm Spaceflight, were lost.
Rocket Lab wrote in a statement on Twitter after the failure that an issue was experienced during the launch, resulting in the loss of the mission.
The company apologized to their launch customers BlackSky and Spaceflight. They added that the issue happened shortly after stage two ignition, according to CNET.
A camera mounted on the Electron's upper stage showed stage separation two minutes and 35 seconds into the flight, thus followed by what appeared to be a brief ignition and a sharp sideways motion before shutting down. Rocket Lab confirmed a loss of telemetry from the rocket just four minutes after liftoff.
The launch on May 15 was a failure, following a failed launch in July 2020, which the company traced to a single faulty electrical connection.
Rocket Lab launched the 580-foot-tall Electron booster at 7:11 a.m. EDT after just an hour of delays due to high upper level winds.
The mission was Rocket Lab's 20th flight and was called "Running Out Of Toes" to mark the milestone.
The first stage of the Electron did manage to parachute back to Earth after separating from the upper stage and splash down softly in the Pacific Ocean as part of the company's reusability program, company representatives said in a statement. A previous Electron made a similar splashdown in November 2020.
Rocket Lab is now testing a technology to guide Electron boosters back to Earth in order to ultimately catch them in mid-air by snagging the parachutes with a helicopter.
The goal is to reuse the boosters and their engines to lower the cost of spaceflight, Space.com reported.
Rocket Lab Mission
When in comes to space launch business, Elon Musk and his company SpaceX grab most of the headlines, but Rocket Lab and its CEO Peter Beck, are making up ground fast.
SpaceX has established an advantage for itself by perfecting rocket recycling, and earlier this year, Beck confirmed his company would pivot to start reusing its boosters.
In November 2020, a mission dubbed "Return to Sender" saw Rocket Lab perform a soft splashdown landing of one of its Electron rockets in the Pacific Ocean.
The splashdown landing was an important first step in developing a new recovery process that will eventually see the company's rockets blast to space, then start a high-drama return to Earth involving both parachutes and helicopter that snatches the spend booster from the sky for recycling.
However, for now, Beck stated that the plan is just to get the wet recovery right before getting any more extra aircraft involved.
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Written by Sophie Webster
