Helicopter catches falling New Zealand rocket but drops it in the ocean seconds later

Rocket Lab, the company behind the feat, said the falling Electron rocket booster was grabbed mid-air by a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter

However, the crew was quickly forced to let the rocket go again for safety reasons, and it fell into the Pacific Ocean where it was collected by a boat

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The Electron rocket blasts off from the Mahia Peninsula launch pad in New Zealand on Tuesday. Photo: Rocket Lab via AP

Published: 3:20pm, 3 May 2022

Using a helicopter to catch a falling rocket is such a complex task that Peter Beck likens it to a “supersonic ballet.”

Rocket Lab, the company that Beck founded, partially pulled off the feat on Tuesday as it pushes to make its small Electron rockets reusable. But after briefly catching the spent rocket, a helicopter crew was quickly forced to let it go again for safety reasons, and it fell into the Pacific Ocean where it was collected by a waiting boat.

The California-based company regularly launches 18m rockets from the remote Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand to deliver satellites into space.

A helicopter hovers above as it attempts to capture Electron’s rocket booster in mid-air on Tuesday. Photo: Rocket Lab via AP

On Tuesday, the Electron rocket was launched in the morning and sent 34 satellites into orbit before the main booster section began falling to Earth. Its descent was slowed to about 10m per second by a parachute.

That’s when the helicopter crew sprang into action, dangling a long line with a hook below the helicopter to snag the booster’s parachute lines. The crew caught the rocket but the load on the helicopter exceeded the parameters from tests and simulations, so they jettisoned it again.

The roller coaster of emotions was caught in a live-stream of the event, with people at mission control cheering and clapping as the rocket was caught, only to let out a collective gasp and sigh about 20 seconds later.

Still, Beck hailed the mission as a success, saying that almost everything went to plan and that the unexpected load issue was a tiny detail which would soon be fixed, a “nothing in the scheme of things.”