Rocket Lab fishes an Electron booster out of the sea

Another productive fishing trip for space exploration company Rocket lab! One of their two-stage electron rockets was successfully launched into orbit from a site in New Zealand. The company then had to fish the Electron booster from out of the sea.

Recovery for Rocket Lab

During the mission, the first stage of the Electron booster came back down to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. It was a controlled, parachute aided landing occurring several hundred miles off New Zealand’s coast. Recovery boats were able to move in quickly, recovering the hardware out of the sea and bringing it back to land without any complications.

A reusable Electron booster

The company Rocket Lab is working on making the first part of their current Electron booster rocket completely reusable so that it can be used over and over again. This will hope to decrease costs and increase the number of launches. Currently, the company has managed to recover three of its electron boosters during orbital test launches. They want to put the time in as practice makes perfect and ultimately want to be able to pluck a falling Electron booster out of the air with a helicopter – an interesting idea to say the least!

The future’s bright

The launch that took place was on the 22nd for Rocket Lab and the 5th of the year. BlackSky was in connection with the launch as two of their satellites were delivered via such rockets. The future looks interesting for Rocket Lab as the company plans to send at least four more of these satellites into the Earth’s orbit in the future.