The American launch company that flies its rockets out of New Zealand has lost its last mission.
Rocket Lab said its Electron vehicle failed late in its ascent from the Mahia Peninsula on the North Island.
All satellite loads are assumed to have been destroyed.
These included imaging spacecraft from Canon Electronics of Japan and Planet Labs Inc of California, as well as a technology demo platform from a UK startup company called Missions in Space.
Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck apologized to his clients.
“I am very sorry that we were unable to deliver our customers’ satellites today. Rest assured that we will find the problem, fix it and return to the platform soon,” he said on Twitter.
Rocket Lab has made everyone in the space sector feel since it launched its Electron vehicle in 2017. It is leading a wave of new equipment that wants to operate compact rockets to serve the emerging small-satellite market.
Saturday’s takeoff from New Zealand was the thirteenth departure of the Electron to date. All previous launches had been a complete success, except for the first one that failed to reach its intended orbit.
What went wrong this time is unclear. Video images showed that the rocket’s second-stage engine operates normally five minutes and 40 seconds in flight, at an altitude of 192 km and at a speed of 3.8 km / s. The video froze.
The main payload on board was a satellite from Canon Electronics, part of a series the company is producing to image the terrain less than a meter wide.
Planet, which operates the largest network of orbiting spacecraft images, was trying to deflect five of its latest satellite iteration. Because the San Francisco company produces and launches so many spaceships, it will more easily recover from this failure.
But for the launch of Missions in space, the loss of the electron is a major disappointment. Its Faraday-1 platform would be the showcase for the company’s new service.
Faraday-1 was a kind of “carpooling” satellite that allowed third parties to carry payloads into orbit without the requirement to build and finance a complete spacecraft. They just needed to rent a “seat” with In-Space.
European aerospace giant Airbus had even taken a position at Faraday-1 to test new radio technology. Called Prometheus, this team was supposed to have conducted a radio frequency survey, scanning the world for distress beacons and the activities of military radars.
In-Space, based in Bordon, Hampshire, tweeted: “The In-Space team is absolutely gutted by this news. Two years of hard work by an incredibly committed group of brilliant smoke engineers. It was a really cool little spacecraft.” .
Future missions are already in production.
Follow Jonathan on Twitter: @BBCAmos
