US space firm to try catching falling rocket with a helicopter: ‘I’m not super worried’
- Rocket Lab aims to pluck a 12-metre-tall booster stage out of mid-air using a combination of ropes, parachutes, a heat shield – and a helicopter with two pilots
- The California-based company is trying to slash the cost of space flight by reusing rockets without the tricky ‘propulsive’ landings used by the likes of SpaceX
Small rocket builder Rocket Lab USA Inc is gearing up for a mission that seems more appropriate for a big-budget action movie: catching a falling four-story-tall rocket booster with a helicopter.
But unlike SpaceX’s reusable, two-stage rocket Falcon 9, which reignites its engines to return to Earth, Rocket Lab aims for a helicopter with two pilots to pluck a 39-foot-tall (11.9-metre-tall) booster stage from mid-air using a combination of ropes, parachutes and a heat shield.
“I’m pretty confident that if the helicopter pilots can see it, they’ll catch it,” said Rocket Lab Chief Executive Officer Peter Beck. “If we don’t get it this time, we’ll learn a bunch and we’ll get it the next time, so I’m not super worried.”
Hingeing on good weather, the capture test is set to take place off the coast of Mahia, New Zealand, the location of Rocket Lab’s primary launch site on Saturday.
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Rocket Lab, which went public last year through a blank-check merger led by Vector Capital that valued it at US$4.1 billion, has launched roughly two dozen missions to orbit for a mix of government and commercial customers, three of which ended in mission failures. The growing field of small rocket companies also includes Astra Space and Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit.
Recovering rocket boosters via parachutes and helicopters instead of using its engines to land vertically means the rocket does not need to save extra – and heavy – fuel for a “propulsive” landing like SpaceX’s Falcon 9, Beck said.
And landing rockets vertically is trickier for smaller, lighter rockets, according to engineers.
Rocket Lab’s helicopter capture test is set to take place after the company’s Electron rocket launches 34 small satellites in a mission that Rocket Lab named “There and Back Again”.
After the first stage booster launches to space and releases its satellite-topped second stage toward orbit, it is designed to fall back to Earth at eight times the speed of sound, re-entering the atmosphere along a narrow path to rendezvous with the helicopter, which is equipped with tracking computers.
The booster stage is designed to deploy a series of parachutes to brake its speed. If all goes well, pilots would steer the helicopter, dangling a long cable underneath, toward the parachuting booster, hook onto it and carry it back to land.
A video of a previous test showed a dummy rocket stage drifting down beneath a parachute, with a smaller, secondary chute stretching the capture line to the side of the rocket, making it easier for the helicopter’s vertically hanging hook line to catch on. The helicopter remained well above the rocket.
“Every piece we’ve successfully tested individually, now it’s just an orchestra to conduct,” Beck said. “If we can use a rocket twice, then we’ve just doubled our production.”
