Rocket Lab tested its parachute system on a live booster for the first time

“Basically we simulate the highest load case, where we drop a fully weighted dummy stage out of the sky and accelerate it to the highest load point and then lift the canopy,” said Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, during a company webcast in August.

Two and a half minutes and 80 vertical kilometers after Thursday’s launch, the Electron’s two stages separated and the charge-laden second stage continued its journey into orbit, while the first stage shuts down and slides into a drop down the gravity well. To ensure the safety of the cargo in the second stage, the two parts of the rocket operate independently, Beck explained, including the reaction and guidance control systems. However, while the first stage splashed gently towards Earth, the second stage will travel thousands of kilometers per hour, too fast to be recovered. Instead, after releasing its payload, the second stage goes through a highly elliptical orbit around the planet for about four weeks before slipping into a reentry trajectory and burning up in the atmosphere.

While coasting, the first-stage reaction control system blasts gas to reorient the thruster 180 degrees to the other side, the ideal angle for reentry and exposing the vehicle’s heat shield. When shedding its fiery layer of atmosphere, the first stage will travel at speeds below Mach 2 and deploy its drop parachute before firing its main parachutes a few kilometers above the water. Once the booster rocket has splashed safely, a recovery craft will rush to pick it up before it sinks and tow it back to shore for inspection and analysis.

“If we can bring one back to the factory, we’ll see what we have. It could be something in very good condition, or it could be something in very bad condition, ”Beck told Engadget. “There is no doubt that there will be a lot of modifications that we can make to make the system really workable.” Once the team concludes their analysis, understands the limits of the system, and everything looks good, Rocket Lab’s next step will attempt an airborne recovery using a live helicopter and first stage rocket. A date for that test has not yet been set.

Beck has opted for the helicopter recovery process because “I really like helicopters,” he joked. The real reason is that due to the small size of the electron, it cannot contain the necessary amount of fuel and reaction mass necessary to settle as the first stage of SpaceX does. “There’s just not enough headroom for anything for it to land on its own,” Beck said. As such, he continued, to slow down the thruster enough on re-entry, “you have to let the atmosphere do the work for you in terms of speed cleaning.” Having a second reserve helicopter ready to dive if the lead plane can’t catch it will further ensure that the rocket never gets its fairings wet.

Overall, the Rocket Lab Electron is a tiny spacecraft. At just 57 feet tall, the Electron is dwarfed by SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which is 229 feet tall. LION. Of course, her small stature comes with a matching price tag. While you’d need to spend over $ 62 million ($ 70 million more if you’re Yusaku Maezawa) for Elon Musk’s company to get you into space, each Rocket Lab launch costs a measly $ 5 million to get off the ground.

Another advantage of the Electron’s size is that the ship can be built relatively quickly compared to its larger competition. It is true that it still takes around 400 hours of work to achieve this, but since 2019, that number has been decreasing. Before last year, the fabrication and preparation of the various carbon fiber components that make up an Electron had to be done by hand, a laborious and tedious task. However, incorporating an automated manufacturing system that year, dubbed “Rosie the Robot,” can produce every piece of carbon fiber needed, ready to assemble in half a day.

“It takes all of Electron’s carbon composite components and efficiently processes all of those components so they’re ready for final assembly,” said Beck. Space news in 2019. “We can process a full electron now in 12 hours.” Of course, there is more work to be done from there, including assembly, avionics and electronics installation; in addition to stress, structural and environmental tests; Not to mention the in-house construction of the first stage Rutherford engine and second stage Curie engine, as well as obtaining the necessary federal flight certifications. “The engines are a big part of the cost,” Beck noted, making up about 70 percent of the rocket’s production requirements.

In reality, the Electron didn’t start out as a reusable launch system. The first models were designed as single-use, but “once we started flying, we got a better understanding of the vehicle,” Beck said, and that understanding led the team to investigate a reusable modification of the existing design. “I don’t think this would have influenced the design, even if we incorporated it on Day 1. We would have ended up pretty much where we are now.”

Rocket lab

“Have a low-cost production method [Electrons] it’s a great place to be, ”Beck continued. “But reusing something that is inexpensive again is really something.”

Going forward, Rocket Lab is working to further establish itself as a space launch company specializing in cube satellite deliveries to LEO. But this nascent industry is evolving rapidly. Beck’s company put its products into orbit within three years of founding the company, so looking forward five to 10 years can be challenging, he noted. “I think the space industry will look very different, or I certainly hope it will,” Beck concluded. “There are a lot of really cool companies that must also prove themselves. I think this is a really exciting time. “