‘Most Successful Startup Since SpaceX’: Americans Say Hello To Rocket Lab

As it prepares for its first launch from US soil, the neo-American company Rocket Lab has been hailed by the Washington Post as “the most successful startup since SpaceX.”

That notice follows a major New York Times article about founder Peter Beck’s aspiration for a mission to Venus.

Rocket Lab chose NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia as the site of its first launch complex outside of New Zealand.

Launch Complex 2 is now complete, following some minor delays with the Covid crashes, and Rocket Lab and the company are ready for their first takeoff in the US: The mission will launch a single micro-sat from the Monolith of the Laboratory of Air Force Research program, which is designed to determine the ability of small satellites to support large-aperture payloads to monitor space weather.

“We’re launch-ready, so now it’s just a matter of waiting for NASA to complete some required software (Autonomous Flight Termination Software or AFTS) before we can launch,” a Rocket Lab spokeswoman told the Herald this morning.

“We have flown AFTS from LC-1, but it will be the first time that an AFTS system has been flown from a NASA range, so they have to do some pretty significant work for the first time on their end. Currently they don’t have an ETA for the completion of the NASA software. “

The Wallops facility was born as a Navy air station during World War II, before playing a role in the dawn of the space age as a test site for the Mercury program, the Post says. Now, it’s rising from the obscurity, with Rocket Lab joining another newcomer to the site, Northrop Grumman’s Antares program.

“While Rocket Lab is primarily focused on national security missions, Northrop Grumman launches its Antares rocket to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station on cargo resupply missions at a rate of approximately two a year, including a perfect launch from the Virginia coast. Friday at 9:16 pm [2.15pm Saturday NZT]”says the Post.

Rocket Lab wants to launch into orbit once a month from Wallops, which would make the facility the second-busiest launch site in the country, behind Cape Canaveral, which is on track to put 39 rockets into orbit. this year.

The Post says Rocket Lab will be a huge boost for Virginia.

However, the company, which has 14 successful launches under its belt since May 2017, is ultimately aiming for a launch within fifteen days from Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula, and is licensed for more.

“Launch Complex 1 will always remain Rocket Lab’s high-volume launch pad thanks to the frequency of launch we can achieve from the site. We are licensed for up to 120 missions per year from Launch Complex 1, which is made possible by the minimum amount of air and ocean traffic at the launch site, “Beck told the Herald.

The Rocket Lab chief added: “Ultimately, having two launch sites is about offering options to small satellite customers – they can choose the location and time of launch that best suit their mission. It’s a level of flexibility. that until now was reserved for large quantities of billions of dollars satellites mounted on much larger launch vehicles. “

Beck also noted that the Mahia site is being expanded to support more frequent launches from New Zealand.

Rocket Lab’s Rutherford engines are made at its largest factory in Los Angeles, and US aeronautical and defense company Lockheed Martin is among its biggest investors.

But about 450 of the company’s 600 employees work at its Auckland assembly plant or Mahia, and it maintains local investors, including Sir Stephen Tindall, ACC and Peter Beck himself.

Rocket Lab’s Electron may be a small rocket, a quarter the size of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, but the company expects it to be a workhorse, launching once a month from here, on flights that should be visible upwards. and down. -Atlantic, says the Post.

And Rocket Lab’s capability for rapid response missions has caught the attention of both the Pentagon and NASA.

The space agency has contracted with Rocket Lab to launch a small satellite to the Moon that will serve as a precursor to human missions by testing the orbit of the space station that NASA hopes will help astronauts reach the lunar surface. That mission, scheduled for next year, would be NASA’s first mission to the moon since the 2013 launch of a satellite, also launched from Wallops, that collected data on the lunar thin atmosphere.

“The mission to the Moon would be a major milestone for Wallops and Rocket Lab, which have taken a clear lead in a race to build small, relatively affordable launch vehicles that could fly small satellites to orbit frequently and on short notice,” he says. the post.

“That is of particular interest to the Pentagon and the intelligence community, which has long wanted the ability to quickly launch a reconnaissance satellite over, say, North Korea.”

RocketLab has received a certain degree of criticism for its U.S. military payload program, but Beck has argued that U.S. Department of Defense and Air Force cargo carried by his company’s Electron rockets always it has been based on research rather than operational. Many technologies are dual-use, the founder argued, pointing to the public good provided by GPS (originally created for the US military) as an example.