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Rocket lab is now convinced that his dreams of reuse can come true.
The company recovered the first stage of his two-stage Electron rocket for the first time Thursday (November 19), fishing the thruster in the Pacific Ocean hours after helping launch a 30-satellite mission aptly called “Return to Sender.”
The scene survived its return from space in great shape, helping validate Rocket Lab’s vision for reusability, according to company founder and CEO Peter Beck.
“The test was a complete success,” Beck said on a call with reporters today (November 23). “We are really convinced that Electron can become a reusable launcher.”
Related: Rocket Lab and its electron booster (photos)
The 18-meter-tall Electron, which allows small satellites to move in orbit, has been a consumable vehicle since its launch in 2017. Last year, however, Beck announced that the company plans to make the first stage reusable. , primarily to boost production and launch rates, although this move is likely to result in significant cost savings as well.
Rocket Lab’s recovery strategy is different from that of SpaceX, which regularly reuses the first stages of its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. The electron is too small to perform vertical, motorized touchdowns like Falcon boosters do, Beck said; the Rocket Lab vehicle cannot carry enough fuel to have enough for landing. The first stages of Electron will therefore return to Earth under parachute and will be torn from the sky with a helicopter before they touch the water.
Rocket Lab had already made significant progress towards this goal prior to the launch of Return to Sender, the 16th Electron Flight. The company had guided boosters to Earth in a controlled fashion on two previous missions, for example, and it demonstrated the helicopter hook-up technique in a drop test with a dummy first stage last March.
But “Return to Sender” marked the first time a first stage Electron had parachuted home, and the first time it had been recovered after a splashdown.
The recovery, which took place in the Pacific some 650 kilometers from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand launch site, was not a picnic. The salvage vessel encountered 6.5ft (2m) swells at the screening site, “so it was a pretty busy event there,” Beck said. “Ironically, the scene survived in very good condition after returning from space, but it took a bit of a backlash at sea.”
And things got really sporty on the way back to shore, when the ship and her crew battled 5m swells.
“The containers welded to the ship’s steel deck started to break apart, so it was quite a wild and savage journey,” said Beck, who remained ashore at mission control during the operation.
With the booster now back on dry land, Rocket Lab will methodically inspect its many components and subsystems to see how well each has survived the harsh re-entry environment. This tedious job has just started, so it’s too early to report detailed results, Beck said.
That being said, some things are already clear, in addition to the encouraging general good condition of the booster. For example, Electron lost a good chunk of its thermal protection panels during the scorching journey through Earth’s atmosphere, Beck said.
“The next big job for us is on that heat shield – strengthening it and redesigning it to support the loads,” he said, referring to the stress of back to school. “But the good news is that we now know the charges and have good visual evidence of which parts of the heat shield worked really well and which failed.”
Related: Rocket Lab to catch falling boosters with a helicopter and refly them
Electron is at home. Engineers will now begin to examine the scene to assess its condition and will use the data to inform future recovery efforts. More updates coming soon! https://t.co/9Muw3kE7UCNovember 22, 2020
The “Return to Sender” booster will no longer take off. But Rocket Lab intends to refly some of the components that survived Friday’s return to Earth in good condition, Beck said.
In the near future, we will see more splashing in the ocean and parachute recall recoveries during Electron missions, he added. Rocket Lab wants to fully understand Electron’s performance in the re-entry environment before moving on to the next step: using a piloted helicopter to catch a falling first stage.
“We’re not going to endanger anyone with a booster coming out of the sky with higher speeds than expected, or [when we] “We can’t accurately predict where it will fit,” Beck said. “We have a great data point, but I want to get a few more data points before I try to snap, purely from a security perspective.”
Beck also confirmed on Monday’s call that he plans to abide by what he previously said promise to eat his hat if Rocket Lab decided to become reusable.
“I think a mixed hat should be fine, but apparently it’s not particularly good for you,” he said. “It’s a topic of discussion at Rocket Lab at the moment.”
Beck said he “cared about the real thing” rather than a loophole like a Homer Simpson nacho hat.
“I think if it’s a woolen cap – how bad could that be?” he said. “It’s like licking a rug, really. It can’t be that bad for you.”
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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