The key to a sustainable and affordable future of space travel and exploration will be reuse, optimization of existing resources. Cars, rockets, transporters and various parts necessary for the entire process of assembly, production and launch of missions are already being reused, but the challenge continues to be rockets.
The companies of Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin, have already managed for a couple of years that the first phases of their rockets return to the planet and that, by themselves, land in a controlled manner. They were the only ones, until now.
American aerospace company Rocket Lab managed to get a helicopter to capture, for the first time in full descent, one of those phases of the rocket of his mission, baptized “There And Back Again”. She got hold of the Sikorsky S-92 helicopter.
It happened this Tuesday, May 3, on the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand. and had the objective of launching 34 satellites to put them into an orbit at 500 kilometers of altitude.
As it did?
It was by using a long-range hook the rocket’s parachute cables Electron, regarding two kilometers high.
“The mid-air capture is an important milestone in Rocket Lab’s quest to make Electron a reusable rocket to increase launch frequency and reduce costs for small satellites,” the company said in its statement.
But not everything went well: In mid-flight, the pilot had to release the rocket following experiencing “a feeling of loading” that he had not previously experienced, the company said.
The Electron ended up falling into the waters of the oceanic country with a parachute and was recovered by the Rocket Lab ship.
“Bringing a rocket back from space and catching it with a helicopter is a kind of supersonic ballet,” said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck, congratulating his team on this first step.
Rocket Lab, which expects to conduct another mid-flight capture test of its boosters in May, has flown 26 missions deploying a total of 146 satellites into space orbit.
