Rocket Lab, a space start-up, will build a second launch site in Virginia

Rocket Lab, a young American aerospace company, has decided to build a second launch site at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility Air Base in eastern Virginia. Until now, the fledgling rocket company had only one launch site – a private facility on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand – but this new site in Virginia will give it more and more money. Options for its missions and could eventually allow Rocket Lab to launch more frequently. In the future.

"Really, it's increasing our overall launch capability," says Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab. The edge. "Also, not all customers want to go to New Zealand to get started. This gives us the location of American soil.

The specialty of Rocket Lab is to launch tiny satellites in space with its Electron rocket, a vehicle over 15 meters tall, shorter than a six-story building. Until now, the company has only launched the Electron twice in New Zealand during two test flights. The first mission in May 2017 went into space but did not reach orbit. The second, in January 2018, successfully put into orbit and successfully deployed four small probes, including a brilliant disco ball satellite that Beck himself created as an art project.

The company is now trying to switch to full-time commercial flights, although it is struggling to launch its first customer mission. Rocket Lab scheduled two attempts to launch its third flight in April and June of this year, but eventually had to postpone the mission to a later date, after the company noticed a strange behavior with one of the engine controllers Electron. Rocket Lab has since replaced the parts of the motor controller. "It's like sitting in the driveway with the engine control light on in the car; you will not make a big trip, "says Beck. "We found some behaviors we did not like and eventually we ended up creating a replacement component in the engine controller."

Photo: Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab hopes to be able to restart its activities by the end of the year with two back-to-back flights planned for November and December. Meanwhile, the company has been working hard on other projects. The company has just unveiled a new brilliant rocket plant in New Zealand, as well as a new mission control center for fighting monitoring in the Mahia Peninsula. The plant is added to that of the Rocket Lab in Huntington Beach, California. The construction was partially to blame for the long gap between flights. "We are building here for the long term, not for the short term," says Beck. "It is very difficult to achieve a high launch rate when you also build a factory, move factories and control the mission."

In addition, Rocket Lab also searched for this second launch site. In July, the company announced that it would pick a spot in one of four government-managed space ports: Cape Canaveral, Florida; Vandenberg Air Force Base in California; Wallops flight installation; or the Pacific Spatial Ports Complex in Alaska. In the end, Rocket Lab opted for Wallops because much of the infrastructure is already in place to support a new launch board, including locations to store the propellant and stations to track launchers . Plus, there is not a lot of traffic on Wallops.

"There is a lot going on in Cape Town right now, with many different pitcher providers," says Beck. "Whereas Wallops is comparatively very calm."

Photo: NASA

According to Beck, Rocket Lab will invest 20 million dollars in the construction of the new site, called Launch Complex 2. (The New Zealand plant is called Launch Complex 1.). it is also building a brand new facility with clean rooms for the handling and integration of space vehicles, offices and a mission control room for flight monitoring. After the company announced the selection today, the construction teams will immediately embark on the construction of the platform. Rocket Lab said it is working with Virginia Space, a group to promote commercial flights in the state, to build all the equipment for the custom launch pad for Electron.

The goal is to perform the first flight off the installation of Wallops by the third quarter of next year. Once everything is in place, Rocket Lab hopes to be able to do about one launch a month from Virginia. Due to the location of the site, the pad is ideal for satellites traveling in low to medium inclination or diagonally at the equator. The New Zealand launch pad is really ideal for satellites moving in orbits flying over the poles. Eventually, Rocket Lab will likely find another launch site best suited for rockets flying to the east over the equator. This decision is still far away, however.

In the end, the goal of Rocket Lab is to get started as frequently as possible, and the company said Wallops would help. Rocket Lab says its launch site in New Zealand can support one mission every 72 hours, allowing up to 120 flights a year. And with the addition of Wallops, Rocket Lab will now be able to handle more than 130 flights a year, according to the company.

Of course, Rocket Lab still has to perform his third flight in space first; we will see if this happens in November. But if it succeeds, the company plans to make up to 16 launches next year, hoping to reduce what it calls a very complete manifesto. Maybe one of these missions will take place in Virginia. "It's an exciting time," says Beck. "We went into orbit, the vehicle is good and this next milestone is over, which is gaining momentum for a reliable and consistent service."