Rocket Lab, which aims to launch satellites into space quickly and cheaply, just used a helicopter catch part of a rocket in mid-air.
This mission, labeled"There and Back Again," took off at 6:50 pm ET.Company communications advisor, Murielle Baker, after initially declaring success, came onto the companies webcast to acknowledge the pilot of the helicopter dropped the rocket"at his discretion" after experiencing a"different load characteristic" than he had during test runs of the catch.Still, Baker called the initial catch"a monumental step forward.
has retrieved spent rocket boosters from the Atlantic Ocean after a Space Shuttle launch. Rocket Lab plans to pursue the helicopter technique to recover its boosters. The company has said Electron is not large enough to carry the fuel supply needed for an upright landing, and a saltwater ocean landing can cause corrosion and physical damage.
also attempted in 2004 a mid-air grab of a capsule carrying samples of particles that had streamed off the sun, but the helicopter recovery attempt failed when the capsule's parachutes failed to release, causing it to crash into the Utah desert. Since its start in 2006, Rocket Lab has deployed satellites to orbit for customers including
, the US Space Force, the National Reconnaissance Office and Canon.
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