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Rocket Lab has moved past last month’s launch error with a successful launch on Monday.
The company’s previous mission ended in failure in July when a faulty electrical connection within the second stage of its Electron rocket caused the engine to shut down and the rocket burned upon reentering the atmosphere.
But there was no repeat on Monday when its thirteenth orbital launch from the Māhia Peninsula, near Gisborne, went off without a hitch.
The company confirmed shortly after 4 p.m. that it had successfully deployed the payload of the rocket, a 100-kilogram Sequoia satellite built by US firm Capella Space.
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Supplied
The last Rocket Lab release was for an American company with military connections.
The satellite is designed to use a sensitive form of radar, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), to generate 3D scans of the Earth’s surface that are capable of detecting the movement of objects as small as 50 centimeters in diameter, even under cloud cover or at night.
Capella signed a contract with the US Department of Defense in May to provide SAR data to the US Navy and also has partnerships with the US Air Force and the US Office of National Reconnaissance. USA
Rocket Lab said the satellite could be used for agricultural and infrastructure monitoring and disaster response and recovery, as well as for security purposes.
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Its orbit would maximize coverage of “important areas” such as the Middle East, Korea, Japan, Europe, Southeast Asia, Africa and the United States, he said.
Speaking ahead of Monday’s launch, Rocket Lab spokeswoman Morgan Bailey said that nerves were “an integral part of every launch day.”
“But the team spends countless hours testing, analyzing, retesting and rehearsing for mission success, so we were well prepared for today,” he said.
Rocket Lab cemented its own ties to the defense system this month, with former United States Under Secretary of Defense Mike Griffin joining the Rocket Lab board.
Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said Griffin, who also previously worked at the US space agency Nasa, brought “a great deal of knowledge and experience from the civil, defense and commercial space sectors.”
