Heli-recovery (4/11/22)

Good morning. Mark your calendars: just about two years from now, on April 8, 2024, the last solar eclipse for another 22 years will be visible from the US. Over 30 million people are in the US path of totality, which will last a whopping four minutes. Find more info below.

In today’s edition: 🚁 A Q&A with Peter Beck🛰️ Sentinel-1C and Vega-C📅 The light week ahead

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There & Back Again

Rocket Lab (NASDAQ:RKLB) will attempt to pluck a booster from the skies via helicopter later this month. The effort, if successful, would represent the first time that a small launcher is recovered.

“It’s actually, by far, the hardest thing to do,” Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck told Payload Friday. The company has tested all the various elements that go into the recovery, from heli rendezvous to parachutes, “but we’re entering the Earth’s atmosphere at eight times the speed of sound on a ballistic trajectory,” said Beck, “so it’s not trivial.”

The mission

The launch window for There and Back Again opens April 19. 

• Taking off from Launch Complex 1 Pad A, an Electron will carry 34 satellites to a sun synchronous orbit for Alba Orbital, Astrix Astronautics, Aurora Propulsion Technologies, E-Space, and Unseenlabs. 

• The launch will bring the total number of satellites launched by Electron to 146.

Earlier this month, Rocket Lab launched two satellites for BlackSky. “More than half of our constellation has been launched with Rocket Lab,” BlackSky told Payload. “Their services provide a high degree of certainty and flexibility and are well attuned to the technical needs of our constellation.”

Other quotes from Beck 

• On doing it yourself: From paving roads near its spaceport to trying to catch rockets with helicopters, “we don't do everything because we've got some magic vision or statement written on a wall somewhere. We do it because it makes the most amount of sense.”

• On end-to-end space strategy: When asked about more M&A deal-making extending into this calendar year, Beck replied: “It’s fair to say we’re not over and we’re not done yet. We obviously can’t go into any specifics, but we’ve clearly articulated our strategy and we’re executing to that strategy.”

• On the wider launch landscape: There’s only so much demand out there. “That demand is not going to service the plethora of launch companies that are proposing…to fly the same customers.” Demand is #1 factor gating launch cadence, not manufacturing or production, per Beck. And if history is any guide, launch vehicles need a lot of flight heritage before they are able to generate a critical mass of demand, he said. 

• On lockdowns: “Covid was a real stinker,” Beck said, especially because it impeded Rocket Lab’s ability to launch from New Zealand last year. 

Click here to read our full convo, which ranges from the risk of amortizing expensive launch assets to how Rocket Lab names its missions. Hint: It’s not by formal committee.

Sentinel-1C Secures a Ride

ESA has contracted Arianespace to launch the EU’s Sentinel-1C Earth observation satellite aboard an Avio-built Vega-C rocket.

Sentinel-1C is expected to take over the duties from Sentinel-1B, which suffered an anomaly in December.

• In January, ESA officials said that recovery efforts had failed. 

• By late February, they identified a 28V power-regulated bus as the root cause. 

With the failure of Sentinel-1B, ESA had been looking at options to get Sentinel-1C into orbit as soon as possible. This latest announcement may represent a slightly accelerated timeline. 

• As of March, Sentinel-1C was scheduled to be launched in mid-2023.

• With this recent announcement, the satellite is set to join the still operational Sentinel-1A in the first half of 2023.

• Specific launch dates will likely be forthcoming following the maiden flight of Vega-C.

Testing performance limits: Sentinel-1C weighs in at 2,300kg and will be placed in SSO at an altitude of around 690km. According to ESA, Vega-C is designed to be capable of delivering 2,200kg to a 700km polar orbit.

Still to come this year: Vega-C is slated to make its debut in June, carrying the passive LARES-2 satellite for the Italian Space Agency. Six small satellites will also be hitching a ride aboard the flight.

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In Other News

• Ax-1 successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Friday and, after a slight delay, docked with the ISS Saturday morning. 

• Axiom launched private astronauts…and…it also launched an NFT marketplace.

• SES senior management received a 50% increase in their bonuses after the company successfully cleared a region of the C-band ahead of a deadline imposed by the FCC.

• Purdue will open a new $73M natsec-focused propulsion lab, which will serve as a testbed for hypersonic technologies. 

• The House Science Committee leaders have asked the White House to withdraw planned regulations that would give the National Transportation Safety Board authority to investigate launch failures.

• Elon Musk decided not to join Twitter’s board of directors, after all.

• Yoel Gat, co-founder and CEO of SatixFy, passed away on Friday.

The Week Ahead

Light week…Passover begins on Friday night. Easter is Sunday and Easter Monday...is Monday. On a less pleasant note, Monday is also Tax Day in the US. 

Friday, April 15: SpaceX will launch NROL-87, a satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The View from 2024

Via AccuWeather: “Being in the path and being outside of the path on April 8, 2024, will literally be the difference between night and day. Over 31 million people live in the path of totality for the 2024 eclipse,” which is more than 2x the ~12.3M who were in the 2017 eclipse’s path. 

• In the path of totality: Dallas and Austin, TX; Little Rock, AK; Indianapolis, IN; Cleveland and Dayton, OH; Buffalo, NY; Burlington, VT; and Montreal, Quebec.

• A short drive from the path: San Antonio, TX; St. Louis, MO; Chicago, IL; Cincinnati, OH; Detroit, MI; and Pittsburgh, PA.