Watch Live: Rocket Lab Recovers Used Electron Booster For The First Time

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Rocket Lab, founded in 2006 by Peter Beck, plans to catch its first Electron rocket thruster on Thursday night.
The aerospace company is showing a live video of the mission, titled “Return to Sender,” starting at 8:15 p.m. ET Thursday (2:15 p.m. NZT Friday).
For every person who watches the YouTube video stream, embedded below, game mogul Gabe Newell will donate $ 1 to a New Zealand children’s hospital.
Newell is also funding the launch of a titanium garden gnome as part of its fundraising campaign.
Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.

Update (9:34 p.m. ET): Rocket Lab said he successfully parachuted the Electron rocket thruster into the Pacific Ocean and recovered the material.

SpaceX is famous for recovering and reusing its colossal Falcon 9 rocket boosters, saving over $ 10 million each time. However, the company founded by Elon Musk is poised to have impressive (albeit less) competition in New Zealand.

On Thursday night, Rocket Lab plans to try its very first recovery of an electron booster, or first stage rocket, after it helped propel a group of small satellites into orbit and then fall back to Earth.

Called “Return to Sender”, the mission should take off at 9:20 p.m. ET Thursday (3:20 p.m. NZT Friday) from the private company’s launch facility on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula. A few hours before the attempt, Rocket Lab tweeted the time seems 85% “to go” for the launch.

Rocket Lab plans to broadcast the entire flight – including the recovery of the rocket thruster – live online, and you can tune in with the YouTube video player below.

The booster for this flight will no longer be used. Instead, it will parachute into the Pacific Ocean and a boat crew will drop by to collect it and return the material for analysis to the Rocket Lab factory.

However, it is a crucial test in completing an 18-month recall recovery program, says Peter Beck, CEO and founder of the company.

“The ultimate goal here is to get it back to a state such that we can put it back on the pad, put it back, recharge the batteries and start over,” Beck said earlier this month. “If we manage to achieve this goal, the economic situation will certainly change quite significantly.”

Watch live video of Rocket Lab launch and recovery attempt

If all goes according to plan, the 59-foot-tall Electron rocket thruster should disconnect from the second-stage rocket, which finishes detonating a payload in orbit, about 2 minutes and 36 seconds after takeoff.

From there, the booster will reorient itself so that its heavy nine motors point towards the ground – a key step if it is to survive the next five minutes of falling. As the atmosphere begins to thicken, the thruster hits what Beck calls “the wall,” which will heat up and tire the vehicle considerably.

Back to Sender_Press Kit 15 — A computer simulation of the forces affecting an electron thruster, or first stage rocket, as it moves through “the wall” of Earth’s atmosphere. Rocket Lab performed the simulation to explore the capture and reuse of multi-million dollar aerospace hardware.

If the booster survives, a series of parachutes will begin to deploy out of its upper end approximately seven minutes and 38 seconds after the mission begins, helping to slow the vehicle to approximately 22 mph (36 km / h).

The booster screening is expected to occur just under 13 minutes after launch, and Rocket Lab plans to broadcast the moment, according to spokesperson Morgan Bailey.

2020 Rocket Lab Electronic Rocket Dummy Parachute Parachute Recovery Helicopter Drop Test — Rocket Lab is testing a parachute system with a dummy rocket thruster. The small-launch startup hopes to use the system as part of a way to salvage and reuse its Electron rocket boosters.

“We’ll have a camera on the first leg that should capture some of the descent,” Bailey told Business Insider in an email.

However, she warned that the company expects to temporarily lose communications with the booster, and “therefore won’t get spectacular views of the splash.”

The footage after recovery should prove to be impressive, however: Engineers placed a 360-degree camera on the stage to record his fiery adventure. “If we get the booster intact, we hope to get more footage out of it,” Bailey added.

If the launch is delayed for any reason, Bailey said Rocket Lab has “backup opportunities available until November 30”. The graphic below shows a full timeline of mission events.

Return to mission profile rocket laboratory electron thruster shipper first stage ocean recovery timeline map plan graphic illustration

For its “Return to Sender” mission, Rocket Lab hopes to use a parachute-based system to salvage a used Electron rocket thruster.

Rocket lab

Beck, who founded Rocket Lab in 2006, initially canceled the recovery of Electron’s booster due to its small size: adding that capacity would reduce payload capacity too much, he thought.

“Things are not going well” with the small rockets, Beck told reporters on a call earlier this month. “This is a fundamental reason I said at the start that I don’t think a small pitcher can be salvaged.”

But with the growing industry demand for launching small satellites, and after seeing SpaceX save a lot of money and time by collecting and reusing their boosters, Beck changed his thinking. Even if Rocket Lab breaks even with a takeover, he thought, it would save him valuable production time to launch more clients.

“If we can get it back and it’s in great shape, then of course economically it’s also very powerful,” Beck said.

Anyone who watches the stream will earn $ 1 for sick and injured children

Rocket lab electron return to sender mission titanium half-life chompski garden gnome — A titanium minifigure of Gnome Chompski, a character from the popular “Half Life” game series, will climb onto the Kick Stage of an Electron vehicle to orbit Rocket Lab’s “Return to Sender” mission.

For every person who watches Rocket Lab’s live stream within 24 hours of launch, Gabe Newell – a video game developer and founder of digital distribution company Valve – will donate $ 1 to the Children’s Hospital. Starship in Auckland, New Zealand.

The billionaire spent the pandemic living in New Zealand (a relatively safe haven against the coronavirus) and wanted an unusual way to thank his hosts for their hospitality, according to Grace Dean of Business Insider.

Rocket Lab electron retrun to sender mission titanium half-life garden gnome chompski kick stage location — Gnome Chompski, unfortunately, is doomed to a fiery end.

As part of the fundraising stunt, Newell purchased a 150 millimeter (5.9 inch) 3D printed titanium figure of “Gnome Chompski,” an original character from the Half-Life video game series. He then paid for space on Rocket Lab’s Kick Stage, a small spacecraft platform that will deploy 30 small satellites into orbit.

But Gnome Chompski is doomed to a fiery end, as the Kick Stage will eventually return to Earth and burn in its atmosphere, traveling over 15,000 mph.

Rocket Lab hopes to avoid a similar fate for the booster, and proceed to capture future Parachute Electron boosters with a helicopter.

“There’s really not too much point in catching a smoking stump with a helicopter,” Beck said.

This story has been updated with new information. It was originally posted at 5:15 p.m. ET.

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