Collaborate Disseminate
Rocket Lab made a successful return to service by launching a customer’s satellite into orbit earlier this week, but that deployment wasn’t the only cause for celebration. The team also managed to insert its own house-built Photon satellite into orbit … Continue reading Rocket Lab launches its two-in-one satellite for deep space missions
For a relatively young space startup, Rocket Lab has made some impressive strides since first reaching orbit in January of 2018, delivering satellites to orbit for NASA, DARPA, the US Air Force and a number of others. A booster failure in early July th… Continue reading Rocket Lab makes successful return to the launchpad after July failure
Space startup Rocket Lab experienced a notable hiccup in early July, when one of its Electron boosters was lost on its way to orbit, along with the seven satellites onboard. The company now claims to have pinpointed the source of the problem, and has g… Continue reading Rocket Lab pinpoints cause of last month’s booster failure
Rocket Lab has made some impressive gains lately as a relatively young space startup focused on launching small satellites to orbit, but the latest outing of its Electron booster hasn’t quite gone to plan. The rocket was lost during a mission to lift s… Continue reading Rocket Lab suffers setback as Electron booster fails in flight
Recovering rockets for re-use is becoming a key consideration for those in the private spaceflight game, with the likes of SpaceX and Blue Origin leading the charge. Rocket Lab is looking to join the party by collecting the first stage of its Electron … Continue reading Rocket Lab uses a helicopter to catch its booster in mid-air
Not so very long ago, orbital rockets simply didn’t get reused. After their propellants were expended on the journey to orbit, they petered out and fell back down into the ocean where they were obliterated on impact. Rockets were disposable because, as far as anyone could tell, building another one …read more
Not too long ago, the ability to reuse rockets rather than burn them up in the atmosphere or plunge them into the ocean was a very fanciful concept. SpaceX singlehandedly changed the game in this regard, but it might soon have some company in… Continue reading Rocket Lab lays out plan to recycle used rockets by catching them with helicopters
On January 21st, 2018 at 1:43 GMT, Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifted off from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. Roughly eight minutes later ground control received confirmation that the vehicle entered into a good orbit, followed shortly by the successful deployment of the payload. On only their second attempt, Rocket Lab had become the latest private company to put a payload into orbit. An impressive accomplishment, but even more so when you realize that the Electron is like no other rocket that’s ever flown before.
Not that you could tell from the outside. If anything, the external appearance of the Electron …read more
Continue reading Smaller and Smarter: The Electron Rocket Takes Flight
The Humanity Star is a poetic and entirely useless satellite. For astronomers, however, it’s a pain in the ass. Continue reading Astronomers Are Annoyed at a New Zealand Company That Launched a Disco Ball Into Orbit
Over the last decade or so the definition of what a ‘small satellite’ is has ballooned beyond the original cubesat design specification to satellites of 50 or 100 kg. Today a ‘smallsat’ is defined far more around the cost, and sometimes the technologies used, than the size and shape of the box that goes into orbit.
There are now more than fifty companies working on launch vehicles dedicated to lifting these small satellites into orbit, and while nobody really expects all of those to survive the next few years, it’s going to be an interesting time in the launcher market. …read more
