Behind the scenes of the world's most beautiful rocket launching site

MAHIA PENINSULA (New Zealand) – Not a blade of grass longer than the rest, a red tag "Delete before the flight" unverified or a single Kiwi (bird or engineer) irrelevant: the launch complex 1 rocket lab looks like an industry brochure comes alive (better In reality). Located at the southern tip of the scenic Mahia Peninsula, on the east coast of New Zealand's North Island, the LC-1 is currently the only operational launch site of Rocket Lab where the Electron vehicle – the small Rocket Lab's low-cost satellite launcher – takes off.

Rocket Lab comes take advantage of the last window of the LC-1 August 19th. But in December 2018, Brady Kenniston, another photographer, had the exclusive opportunity to photograph the first Rocket Lab mission, NASA, ElaNa-19, from this private launch site. This launch was going to be Rocket Lab's more important mission to date because, as the leader of the small satellite industry, they have had the opportunity to show NASA (and the world) what they are made of. If successful, the small satellites that would need to go into space could be brought in the future, besides the company would get approval from NASA launch services as an eligible vehicle to drive the future scientific loads of NASA's small satellites.

Fortunately, Brady has graciously invited me to participate in this unforgettable trip. And I had my camera and my notebook.

How do we arrive at the end of the world?

How to get to the paradise of rocket launchers? Aircraft, trains and cars, of course!

Brady and I started the trip to New Zealand on December 7 at 4 pm from Chicago, before landing in Los Angeles a few hours later. Pretty easy, right? Unfortunately, we had just started. The next stop was a five hour stopover at LAX, followed by a 14 hour flight to Auckland, New Zealand.

I had already done some long-haul flights previously (once in Moscow, Russia, via Frankfurt, Germany, then to Baikonur, Kazakhstan, for the launch of Expedition 54 with crew to the Space Station) and, at first it seemed rather discouraging. But after checking my flight reservation and finding that we were going to board the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, the trip was well worth it. We arrived two days later, on December 9, which was kind of disorienting. (Between a 14-hour flight and the 19-hour flight between Los Angeles and Auckland, it was good to know you, December 8, 2018)

So, for those who keep the score, let's add the time spent up to now …

• 10 hours of standby in the United States
• A four-hour afternoon flight between Chicago and Los Angeles
• Another five-hour stopover
• 14 hours flight to Auckland

For a total of 33 hours of travel to reach our destination. Almost. After landing in Auckland in the late morning, we then had to find our rental car and start the seven-hour trip to Gisborne. It is a city of about 37,000 inhabitants, representing the populated area closest to the launch site of the Mahia Peninsula. Flying 14 hours with a lentils backpack, a camera carrying carrying case for the body and two luggage checked with tripods (not to mention the clothes for two weeks), there was a lot to follow . Fortunately, our airline provided us with the luggage on time – otherwise, we would have had serious problems if we were more than 7 hours from the airport while staying close to the launch site.

But all these logistical problems quickly disappeared when we began our journey in the upper part of the North Island of New Zealand. It was full of winding roads, scenic coastlines and impressive vantage points.

Finally, after 40 hours of exhausting sleep, Brady and I arrived at our Airbnb a few hours before sunset. We put our stuff down and sat on the back patio for a bit to enjoy the sunset, but I was just zonked. Arriving at sunset, I was not there. I went to bed and woke up a little over 12 hours later (exactly the same position I went to sleep in). Being awake for more than 40 hours will do it for you, but no one says that rocket photography was easy.

Schedule of the hour of the show

After a good night's sleep, it was time to get to work for the reason we were really here: a rocket launch in New Zealand! From our Airbnb in Gisborne, we had only a little more travel: an additional hour and a half drive from Mahia, followed by another hour to the southern tip from the Mahia Peninsula, where the launching complex is located. Mahia itself is a very small town of about 700 inhabitants located east of the North Island of New Zealand. The LC-1, the world's first private orbital launch complex, is located just south of the city on the Mahia Peninsula.

Often, when it comes to shooting launches, members of the media are escorted to the launch pad and allowed to install cameras in a relatively small and predetermined area. If you remember my experience with the Falcon Heavy last year, for example, we had in fact a multitude of possible locations. Rocket photographers are generally not so lucky.

But if the SpaceX experience was better than most others, Rocket Lab still offers photographers something more cool. With Launch Complex-1 and Electron this time, Brady and I had almost total creative freedom to place our cameras. We had the ability to place objects above the structures, at the base of the rocket on the ground, tight against handrails – basically, in addition to physically fixing a camera to the rocket, we could pose cameras nowhere.

The creative approaches that you can adopt with an opportunity are endless, which presents its own type of challenge. Where do you start if everything is possible and the canvas is white? It was still an incredible opportunity. And I brought with me six sound-activated remote cameras, ready to be placed around the launching pad as soon as I had an idea for each one.

Quite quickly in terms of the desired moves, I knew that I wanted to check three main boxes. The other three would be a bonus. My shooting table was …

1. A shot of the engine (these very dark / underexposed photos that show the details in the rocket's exhaust)

2. A vertical shot very close. Although the Electron vehicle is quite powerful, it is also one of the shortest rockets. A nearby camera, oriented vertically, framed tightly on the rocket would make it look much higher than it actually is.

3. A good horizontal photo taken from the opposite side of the camera oriented vertically (to change the scenery, do not look like a different crop of the same photo) or another on the same side but even closer. Horizontal photos work great for the Web among many other things, and I know that horizontal photos are much more likely to be used as background photos than vertical photos or vertical photo collage. So I wanted to make it a priority (and often make horizontal launch images a priority).

Beyond the conceptualization of images, this launch of the Electron rocket posed many challenges in addition to the usual challenges encountered on US launch sites. And even more than the amount of travel required and the freedom left to our remote camera placements, the biggest challenge we faced was finding a place for decent vision. In places such as Florida (Cape Canaveral AFB / Kennedy Space Center) or California (Vandenberg AFB), where launches are fairly regular, there are public places reserved for visitors. In some cases, there are even guides, blog posts, or videos with sample photos, a description of each, and the advantages / disadvantages of looking from there.

But when she started watching movies in New Zealand, the Mahia Peninsula is almost entirely private farmland and, unfortunately, we could not watch the launch closely, only our cameras had that privilege. And since it was only Rocket Lab's fourth flight of the Rocket Electron rocket, there were none of these informative blogs or guides written by photographers about their position. Florida has more than 40 years of exploration of the Space Coast, that is why we had to do the research ourselves. Where do we go?

Enter, toilet Wi-Fi.

Between the cities of Mahia and Nuhaka, Oputama Road runs along the ocean and offers panoramic views and landmarks every two or three kilometers. And during one of our trips from Gisborne to Mahia, we noticed that there was a particular looking dish on the top. "What is it for? Surf the web while you're in John Street? "

When we stopped on the side of the road and took up the Wi-Fi settings of our phones, of course, that was the case. A Wi-Fi network without password. In testing the download speed, the result was rather correct: 8mb / s and 6 up! Amazing for an area with zero cell reception. Is this the best for banking or other network operations that require a secure connection? No, because you never know where this little dish is and where the internet comes from. But we know that this little dish would allow us to watch and broadcast the live broadcast from the outside.

Trevor Mahlmann's inscription image