Rocket Lab says the booster recovered in “good condition”, some parts will re-fly

Rocket Lab successfully launched its “Return to Sender” mission 10 days ago. Then, for the first time, the company attempted to salvage the first stage of the Electron thruster from the ocean after that launch, and now Rocket Lab has provided a preliminary assessment of the vehicle’s condition.

In summary, the company said in an update on its website: “We could not have asked for a better result from our first recovery attempt and the team are thrilled.” The rocket came back in such good condition, the company added: “We will requalify and relaunch some components.”

The flight on November 20 marked the first time Rocket Lab fished an Electron in the Pacific Ocean. The rocket was picked up from the waters off the coast of New Zealand, from where the small thruster is launched. Founder Peter Beck said the company wanted to assess the health of the first stage – and make the necessary changes to the heat shield and flight software – before moving on to the final stage of capturing the Electron rocket in flight, with a helicopter.

Although they performed a number of tests prior to this mission, the company’s engineers weren’t entirely sure what they would recover after the Electron rocket experienced temperatures above 2,400 ° C and speeds of 2.35 km / s during its descent.

To accommodate this turbulent environment as Electron howled through the atmosphere, Rocket Lab added reaction control system thrusters to reorient the first stage for re-entry. A parachute system was also added to slow its descent lower in the atmosphere.

So how did the rocket’s heat shield withstand these conditions?

“The scene has held up remarkably well,” the company said. “The carbon composite structure was completely intact. As expected, the heat shield on the base of the stage suffered thermal damage upon re-entry. It was never designed for this load case, but before reinforcing the heat shield, we wanted to see just how much heat it could take unchanged. With a wealth of data on this now, our team has already started working on upgrades for future recovery missions. “

What the press release does not say is how well the rocket engine section, with its nine Rutherford engines, performed on re-entry. The company also hasn’t released any photos of the engine section itself. This suggests that there is still important work to be done to protect this area when re-entering.

“The data is excellent”

However, it seems likely that Rocket Lab will get there. Company engineers are currently inspecting and analyzing “every inch” of the recovered first stage so they can fine-tune its recovery systems before the next attempt. This will not happen the next time Rocket Lab launches – the “Owl’s Night Begins” mission for Synspective, a Japanese Earth imaging company, which is scheduled to launch on December 12th.

On the contrary, Rocket Lab says it will wait to launch another recovery mission in early 2021. It also will not attempt to recover by helicopter this time around. The goal is to collect more data. “A dataset is great, but we’re a conservative bunch and we want to validate everything a second time before we move on to the next phase of the recovery,” the company said.

By recovering and relaunching the first stage of a vertically launched rocket, Rocket Lab seeks to become only the second company to do so, following SpaceX and its Falcon 9 rocket. Rocket Lab has now completed 16 Electron missions. In December 2015, SpaceX successfully landed a Falcon 9 rocket for the first time during its 20th Falcon 9 rocket launch.

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