On July 22 2017 00:19 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Not to mention hardware, software, material, and engineering tests. Then even assembly, and refueling and so on.
Is this in reply to going to the Moon? Because the Moon isn't a good refuelling station. It's still a decently deep gravity well. Something like 2km/s to high Eart orbits. Then you would need to mine and refine propellants and launch them into orbit.
If you want to do in orbit refuelling it's probably best to just do it in LEO and get your fuel from Earth. Something like ULA's ACES concept, ideally supported by reusable launches. But even using expendable launches could lead to a big jump in performance. Then you can evolve that by supplying propellant depots from near Earth asteroids, some of which are energetically closer than the Moon. But it will be a long time until anything produced in space will be cheaper, even in low Earth orbit, than just producing the same thing on Earth and launching it into orbit.
Still, if you want something that has clear relevance for the future, in orbit refuelling and possibly propellant depots are a good bet. A much better use of resources than developing single-use technology for a space station or Moon base.
So you'd be wasting fuel to get more fuel
You would be wasting fuel that is on the surface of Earth in order to get (much less) fuel on Low Earth Orbit. That's still a good tradeoff. It allows you to get large payloads to the outer solar system faster, without having to design a super heavy lift launcher. It's also useful on Low Earth Orbit, for removing space debris for example.
There has been projects to mine ice on the moon hence Japan, and ESA announcing mapping missions to look for such areas.
Yes, there has been a lot of ideas for Moon bases but they are in very early stages. I think of these only ESA is half-serious. And they aren't driven by economic logic. They are done for national (or in the case of ESA international) pride. Except for Bigelow. Maybe they see a Lunar Tourism business.
The moon has proximity, a very good positive for any real missions. I suppose an alternative to the moon as a mining facility would be an asteroid as a much smaller gravity well - but it would be interesting to compare the cost of that transfer orbit to a lunar liftoff, not to mention that asteroids probably don't have enough solar power to be easy to use.
A moon base makes sense. Not as a short term plan by hobbyist rocket people but certainly by a dedicated enough government. Makes more sense than any scheme that involves launching lots of rockets to fuel up a single rocket under the illusion that that will make things work more goodly. Might as well just build a superheavy lift rocket and call it a day if you do that.
On July 22 2017 07:15 LegalLord wrote: Makes more sense than any scheme that involves launching lots of rockets to fuel up a single rocket under the illusion that that will make things work more goodly. Might as well just build a superheavy lift rocket and call it a day if you do that.
The current NASA budget isn't large enough to support a super heavy launcher AND the development of payloads. Just look at SLS: it will fly every two years. It will be decades before it builds up a decent history. There's no way NASA would be willing to fly a $3bn mission on a rocket's second flight if Congress didn't tell them to.
So yes, it does make more sense to launch lots of small rockets "under the illusion that things will work more goodly". Because those rockets already have a flight history and thus are expected to "work more goodly".
I'm not even trying to pick on SLS here. All super heavy lifters will have the same issues. The only exception was Saturn V because Apollo generated enough demand for it to fly somewhat often. There's a reason why the Soviets discontinued the N-1 and it wasn't embarassment.
Less than a year for SpaceX add that with the first test(s) of Falcon heavy and just wanting the rocket to get as far away from the pad if it fails is nerve racking.
Personnel from NASA, SpaceX and the U.S. Air Force have begun practicing recovery operations for the SpaceX Crew Dragon. Using a full-size model of the spacecraft that will take astronauts to the International Space Station, Air Force parajumpers practice helping astronauts out of the SpaceX Crew Dragon following a mission. In certain unusual recovery situations, SpaceX may need to work with Air Force for parajumpers to recover astronauts from the capsule following a water landing. The recovery trainer was recently lowered into the Indian River Lagoon near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center allowing Air Force pararescue and others to refine recovery procedures. SpaceX is developing the Crew Dragon in partnership with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
Whenever SpaceX versus Blue Origin starts I always say Bigelow Aerospace is the most vital commercial project NASA is working with. By all accounts it is working better than first realized and not going anywhere.
A prototype of what could be the next generation of space stations is currently in orbit around the Earth.
The prototype is unusual. Instead of arriving in space fully assembled, it was folded up and then expanded to its full size once in orbit.
The module is called BEAM, the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, and it has been attached to the International Space Station since April last year.
Expandable modules allow NASA to pack a large volume into a smaller space for launch. They're not made of metal, but instead use tough materials like the Kevlar found in bulletproof vests.
The station crew used air pressure to unfold and expand the BEAM, but it's wrong to think about BEAM as expanding like a balloon that could go "pop" if something punctured it.
NASA's Jason Crusan says there is a better analogy: "It's much like the tire of your car."
Even with no air in it, a tire retains its tirelike shape.
When BEAM unfolded in orbit, it adopted its more natural shape, something resembling a stumpy watermelon. Even if it was to lose all its internal air, "it still has structure to it," says Crusan.
Of course NASA would prefer BEAM not lose all its air, so there are many layers of shielding to prevent things like meteorites or other space debris from poking a hole in BEAM.
"We do believe we've taken at least one hit," says Crusan. "Very small in nature, and actually we can't even visually see where it's at."
Crusan says there was no loss of pressure from the hit.
NASA isn't actually using BEAM for anything. It's there just to see how it behaves in space. But Crusan says the space station crew does go inside every once in a while to check sensors inside the module. He says crew members seem to like visiting BEAM.
"We've actually had up to six crew members at a time inside of it. It's about 15 to 16 cubic meters inside," says Crusan. That translates to something like the interior space of a modest-sized school bus.
The original plan was to detach BEAM after two years and let it burn up as it re-enters Earth's atmosphere. But there has been a change.
"Because of its performance and it's doing extremely well, there's really no reason to throw it away," says Crusan.
Since storage is at a premium aboard the space station, NASA now plans to use BEAM as a kind of storage shed and to keep it in space as long as the station continues to operate.
The company that made BEAM, Bigelow Aerospace, has big plans for expandable modules, including a stand-alone space station called the B330. The B330 will be 20 times larger than BEAM. But company president Robert Bigelow remains cautious despite the good performance of BEAM.
"No, I worry too much," says Bigelow. The B330 is much, much more complex than BEAM.
"It has two propulsion systems," he says. "It has very large solar arrays, a full suite of environmental life-support systems."
These are all things that have to work flawlessly in order to keep a crew alive and happy in space.
"That's why I walk around perpetually with a frown. It's just because there's so much to think about and be concerned about," says Bigelow.
Despite his concerns, Bigelow says his new space stations may be in orbit before too long. His company plans to have two B330s ready for launch in 2020.
The United States has by far the most rich and diverse commercial aerospace industry in the world, but that doesn't mean companies in other countries aren't giving it a go as well. One of those companies is Interstellar Technologies, which began as a group of hobbyists in 1997 and became a corporation in 2003.
After more than a decade of engine and booster development, Interstellar is poised to make its first launch attempt—and the first launch of a private rocket from Japan—this weekend. As early as Saturday, the company will attempt to launch a sounding rocket named Momo from the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The launch window opens from 10:20 to 12:30 local time.
According to the Momo rocket's user's guide, the vehicle stands 8.5 meters tall, has a dry mass of 250kg, and a 0.5-meter diameter. It can deliver 10kg to an altitude of 130km, or 20kg to an altitude of 120km. The duration of the entire flight lasts about 10 minutes depending on the mission profile, and this includes about four minutes of microgravity. Afterward, the payload can be recovered from the ocean.
A single liquid-fueled engine, which uses ethanol for fuel and liquid oxygen as an oxidizer, powers the rocket. This engine (shown being test fired in the embedded Tweet) has a relatively modest thrust of 12kN. By way of comparison, each of the nine Merlin 1-D engines that powers SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket has a thrust of 845kN.
Still, it's a start. And because the company is using liquid-fueled engines rather than solid rocket motors, the traditional means of powering sounding rockets, it suggests that Interstellar eventually plans to get into orbital flights. The company hopes to do that by around 2020. "The next main business is launching a satellite," the company's chief executive, Takahiro Inagawa, said this week. "I want to make that step." But first, the company will have to master suborbital flights.
SAN FRANCISCO — SpaceX, the rocket maker founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has raised up to $350 million in new financing and is now valued at around $21 billion, making it one of the most valuable privately held companies in the world.
SpaceX’s new financing was disclosed in public filings that were obtained by Equidate, a marketplace for private company stock. SpaceX declined to comment. .
With the latest funding round, SpaceX joins an elite club of seven venture-backed companies valued at $20 billion or more around the world, according to research firm CB Insights. Investors have poured money into the companies, many of which operate capital intensive businesses such as Uber and Airbnb, even as smaller start-ups have gone public and have seen their valuations waver.
Snap, the messaging and entertainment company, went public in March at a market capitalization of $24 billion, which has since fallen to about $16.5 billion. Meal delivery company Blue Apron went public last month at a market capitalization of $1.9 billion, which was less than its private market valuation; that has since dropped to around $1.3 billion.
Still, investors have long believed that a handful of companies have the potential to become globally dominant businesses. Five companies based in the United States that are valued at more than $20 billion — including Uber, Airbnb and WeWork — have upended established industries like transportation and real estate. Palantir, the analytics company that is in the $20 billion-plus valuation club, is vying to become a major government contractor, as is SpaceX.
The two other closely held companies valued at more than $20 billion are both in China — ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing and consumer electronics maker Xiaomi.
SpaceX’s latest funding nearly doubles the valuation of the company, which was pegged at around $11 billion when it raised $1 billion from Fidelity and Google in 2015. Previous investors in SpaceX include venture capital firms Founders Fund and DFJ.
SpaceX is best known for Mr. Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars, but it is also a key player in the business of sending commercial satellites into space.
Astronomers have found an abundance of exoplanets, but no exomoons. Despite ongoing efforts, the tiny celestial bodies have just been too elusive to detect using modern technology. However, researchers might have just hit paydirt. They've used Kepler Space Telescope data to discover signs of what looks like a Neptune-sized moon orbiting a planet in the Kepler-1625 system, 4,000 light years away from Earth. They were tipped off to the companion when they noticed dips in brightness (indicative of an object transiting in front of a star) around a planet during three of its transits. It's a very promising piece of evidence, but we wouldn't bet money just yet -- there's some homework left to do before the discovery is validated.
Right now, there's only the Kepler telescope data to work with. It's one of the strongest candidates for an exomoon to date (most candidates fail quickly), but not so bulletproof that you'd stake your life on it. The scientists want to collect measurements from the Hubble telescope before they can make an authoritative statement one way or the other. This is probably an alien moon, but you never want to rule out the possibility of another object.
Of course, a bona fide exomoon wouldn't be shocking. Ask anyone with a passing interest in space and they'll probably argue that moons are common in other star systems, if just through sheer numbers. Rather, it could represent a big milestone in how humanity studies space. Where the focus so far ha been on spotting the largest objects, this suggests that astronomers might have some success looking for the minutiae of a system. And that's more important than you think. Earth's Moon increased the chances for life on its host planet (by stabilizing the rotation and shielding it from asteroids), so it's conceivable that an exomoon might produce a similar effect.
Not NASA or PSA related, but this was interesting.
Luxembourg's parliament has voted in favor of passing an asteroid mining law that give companies ownership of what they extract from the celestial bodies. The European country has been working on the bill since 2016 and originally intended to pass it earlier this year. It took a bit more time to iron things out, but in the end, it's gotten an overwhelmingly unanimous vote and is scheduled to take effect on August 1st.
Luxembourg's law is pretty similar to the one President Obama signed back in 2015 in that it gives mining companies the right to keep their loot. Both of them also take advantage of a loophole in the UN's Outer Space Treaty, which states that nations can't claim and occupy the moon and other celestial bodies. They don't give companies ownership of asteroids, after all, only the minerals they extract and after they extract it.
A private company planning a Moon mission involving New Zealand's Rocket Lab says it still hopes to reach the lunar surface by as early as the end of the year.
Florida-based Moon Express signed a deal with Rocket Lab in 2015 and if it can reach the Moon by the end of the year and accomplish a number of tasks it could win US$20 million ($26m).
Its robotic lander would be blasted into orbit aboard Rocket Lab's Electron rocket.
The MX-1 lunar lander is reportedly about 1.8m tall, weighs about 250kg and would fly to the moon over about four days after being delivered into high earth orbit by the Electron.
The US$20 million Google Lunar XPRIZE will go to the first private operation to place a spacecraft on the Moon's surface, travel 500m and transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth.
Rocket Lab says it is still the plan to get Moon Express into orbit by the end of the year. However, that will depend on as yet unproven technology to work.
Rocket Lab is in the early stages of a three-vehicle test programme and Moon Express is still developing its lander at its facilities at Cape Canaveral, from where Apollo missions were launched.
Rocket Lab's first test launch successfully made it to space in late May. The first stage performed as it should but the second stage failed to deliver the payload to orbit.
Results of data analysis from the test flight could be available some time next week.
Earlier this month Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck said the company and its investors had confidence in the programme and they had another five rockets in various stages of production.
Beck said then a second test launch was about two or three months away and the company hoped to get its commercial launches underway as soon as it was satisfied with the test programme.
Moon Express unveiled design details for its lunar spacecraft at a hearing held by the House Science, Space and Technology Committee last week.
It said it was planning three missions to the moon by the end of 2020, with the ultimate goal of establishing a permanent station near the moon's south pole and returning lunar dust and rock samples to Earth for analysis of minerals.
The company says the initial Lunar Scout expedition - as early as this year - will be the first commercial voyage to the Moon.
"This historic expedition will demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of entrepreneurial approaches to space exploration, carrying a diverse manifest of payloads including the International Lunar Observatory," it said.
"Our goal is to open the lunar frontier for all of us, ultimately expanding Earth's economic and social spheres to our eighth continent, the Moon."
The company was awarded US$1 million by Google earlier this year as the only team to flight test a prototype of its lander.
In 2015 Rocket Lab and Moon Express signed a deal for three launches aboard the Electron.
This position is assigned to Office of Safety and Mission Assurance for Planetary Protection. Planetary protection is concerned with the avoidance of organic-constituent and biological contamination in human and robotic space exploration. NASA maintains policies for planetary protection applicable to all space flight missions that may intentionally or unintentionally carry Earth organisms and organic constituents to the planets or other solar system bodies, and any mission employing spacecraft, which are ntended to return to Earth and its biosphere with samples from extraterrestrial targets of exploration. This policy is based on federal requirements and international treaties and agreements.
Current Agency policy requires the SL appointments be time-limited. The initial appointment will be for 3 years, with the possibility of extending for an additional 2 years. The selectee for this position will receive a temporary promotion. Employee will then return to a grade level no lower than the grade previously held at the home center. This temporary promotion may be converted to permanent without further competition.
Duties The Planetary Protection Officer (PPO) is responsible for the leadership of NASA's planetary protection capability, maintenance of planetary protection policies, and oversight of their implementation by NASAs space flight missions. The PPO also supports the Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) Technical Authority and serves as a principal advisory resource for the Chief, SMA and other senior officials on matters pertaining to planetary protection. The PPO is the Agency's focal point for interactions with external organizations on matters related to planetary protection. Primarily the Planetary Protection Officer performs the following:
Leads planning and coordination of activities related to NASA mission planetary protection needs.
Leads independent evaluation of, and provides advice regarding, compliance by robotic and human spaceflight missions with NASA planetary protection policies, statutory requirements and international obligations.
Advises the Chief, SMA and other officials regarding the merit and implications of programmatic decisions involving risks to planetary protection objectives.
In coordination with relevant offices, leads interactions with COSPAR, National Academies, and advisory committees on planetary protection matters.
Recommends and leads the preparation of new or revised NASA standards and directives in accordance with established processes and guidelines.
It began as so many tiffs have in 2017—on Twitter. SpaceX had just completed a near-perfect first half of the year. Ten launches. Two re-flights. Zero accidents. Speaking to his 11 million followers, Elon Musk couldn’t resist taking a dig at his long-time rival in the US launch industry, United Launch Alliance.
“Worth noting that Boeing/Lockheed get a billion dollar annual subsidy even if they launch nothing. SpaceX does not,” Musk tweeted. Comparatively, this may not seem too incendiary for the social media platform. But within the stately rocket world, Musk had just trash-talked ULA, the joint launch venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Subsidy is a trigger word brandished often by Musk in this fight, implying that ULA cannot compete without government help. So it didn’t take long for ULA’s chief executive, Tory Bruno, to reply with his own tweet: “Sorry. That is simply not true. There is no ‘billion dollar subsidy’. Amazing that this myth persists.” (This myth may persist because it is, at least in part, true.)
This public exchange between the chief executives of two multi-billion-dollar rocket companies highlights the extraordinary competition that has unfolded in the US launch industry during the last dozen years. Unlike the space race of the 1960s, this clash has involved corporations, not countries. They’ve fought in Congress, the courts, and on the launch pad and, in doing so, they’ve revolutionized the aerospace industry.
A decade ago the smart money was on United Launch Alliance and its owners, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the federal government’s two largest contractors. In 2015 alone, these two behemoths performed $50 billion in work for American taxpayers. They'd built America's rockets for decades. In the other corner stood some computer guy from Silicon Valley who partied with mariachi bands and dreamed about colonizing Mars.
At times, the competition has been bizarre. About a year ago, after SpaceX lost its Falcon 9 rocket during a launch pad test, there were murky allegations of a sniper on the roof of a nearby ULA facility when the booster exploded. SpaceX denied making such an accusation.
Even though it had nothing to do with the accident, ULA still sought to capitalize on the misstep. Just three months after SpaceX’s catastrophic explosion, ULA launched a new website, the “Rocket Builder.” It touted the reliability of ULA’s boosters compared to those of a certain company that kept blowing stuff up.
Despite the accidents and long odds, to a large extent Musk has prevailed against the two titans of US aerospace. Today, his Falcon 9 rocket is cheaper, and it regularly bests ULA’s fleet in bids for commercial and government satellite launches. Musk has continued to innovate, and, if SpaceX succeeds with commercializing reusable spaceflight, he stands poised to dominate the global launch market.
None of this means the war has ended, however. Large federal awards are presently on offer to develop new launch systems, and Bruno has been pushing ULA to be as competitive as possible, slashing jobs and pushing innovation. If anything, the future rocket wars are likely to only get more interesting from here.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made it pretty clear he wants to die on Mars (just not on impact!). He believes we should be a multi-planetary species, and SpaceX has been marching toward that goal since its founding in 2002. Every new rocket engine, every launch, every trip to the International Space Station is not just a business transaction but also an opportunity to upgrade SpaceX's engineering savvy and expand its portfolio of launch capabilities. Because before Elon can retire overlooking Olympus Mons, the company is going to need to get a lot of people and payload into space. That's why, before the year is out, they hope to launch what will be the most powerful rocket on the planet: the Falcon Heavy. It will be a challenge unlike any yet faced in the era of private spaceflight. Can the team at SpaceX pull it off?
To get larger things into orbit requires larger launch vehicles—there's a reason the Saturn V used for the Apollo lunar missions was, and remains, the most powerful rocket ever launched. Getting humans to Mars will require even more power, but building a larger vehicle today wouldn't make economic sense—there wouldn't be enough customers to justify the development and cost. (Consider that Sputnik, the first human-made satellite, was the size of a beach ball, whereas modern satellites used for communication are often the size of a school bus.) The other option is to augment an existing design with additional boost—like adding more locomotive cars to a train to pull more freight. This is what SpaceX is doing, with one wrinkle: Rockets are usually disposable, one-mission-only devices. SpaceX has been perfecting reusable rockets. You don't throw away a locomotive at the end of the trip.
A modern launch vehicle involves two stages: a first stage, the majority of what you see standing on the launchpad, responsible for pushing most of the way into orbit; and a second stage to finish the job. By jettisoning the extra mass of the first stage when it's done burning its fuel, a smaller, more efficient engine can get just the upper stage and payload into orbit. It's like a delivery service that uses airplanes, barges, and semi-trucks to move packages most of the way around the world, then does the last leg to your house with a van.
So how much rocket is the first stage of the world's most powerful launch vehicle? The Falcon Heavy combines three first stages from the Falcon 9, SpaceX's current launcher, whose moniker refers to its power source: nine of SpaceX's proprietary Merlin engines (its predecessor, the Falcon 1—a pioneer in private space launches—had only one). So the Falcon Heavy will have a total of 27 Merlin engines, each producing 190,000 lb-ft of thrust at sea level. (Generally, the thrust of a rocket engine increases with altitude as atmospheric density decreases.) That's enough to put 119,000 pounds into orbit, which SpaceX notes is "a mass equivalent to a 737 jetliner loaded with passengers, crew, luggage, and fuel." To get the most payload into orbit, the Heavy could let its engines burn as long as possible—but that would leave no fuel to change trajectory, which is required for SpaceX to press its big advantage: recovery.
The Falcon 9's cycle—launch, then return of the first stage to terra firma or to a drone ship in the ocean—is becoming routine. Musk has already indicated he's planning to return all three components of the Falcon Heavy's first stage to Earth. The Falcon Heavy will use a common procedure for the three-part stage: The side boosters, clones of its center booster (essentially, each the first stage of a Falcon 9), burn out prior to the center and are jettisoned. The likely plan is to land the two outer boosters on solid ground, as their shorter burn times mean they will not have traveled as far, while the center booster will use a drone-ship landing, which has the flexibility to be placed wherever in the ocean is convenient, based on the rocket's trajectory. The more stages SpaceX can successfully recover, the cheaper launches will be for its customers.
If SpaceX's schedule holds, the first launch will happen before the holiday season. (In fact, Musk just tweeted that he plans for the maiden launch in November.) It carries a fair amount of risk in many phases of the mission, from the challenge of integrating three Falcon 9s to the recovery of three boosters—two by land, one by sea—in rapid succession. SpaceX's commitment to making Mars accessible means it will have to demonstrate that this scaled-up Falcon Heavy works and is reusable. Besides satellite launches, it is a key element to its planned Red Dragon capsule mission to Mars: an intermediate unmanned step toward sending people to the Red Planet. A demonstration of the Red Dragon is currently scheduled to launch in 2020 and land in 2021. While it may not be successful on the first try, Musk and company have shown patience and a willingness to learn from mistakes to get things right. Ultimately, they'll make the extraordinary become routine.
Rocket Lab, an American-New Zealand aerospace company, has completed an internal review of data from its May 25 test flight of its Electron rocket. The review found the launch had to be terminated due to an independent contractor’s ground equipment issue, rather than an issue with the rocket. Rocket Lab’s investigation board has identified the root causes and corrective actions.
The Federal Aviation Administration, the primary body responsible for licensing the launch, has overseen Rocket Lab’s comprehensive investigation and will review the findings.
Rocket Lab’s engineers have spent the last two months working through an extensive fault tree analysis to ensure all factors that may have influenced the outcome of the launch were thoroughly evaluated. The investigation involved the review of over 25,000 channels of data collected during the flight in addition to extensive testing at Rocket Lab facilities in California and New Zealand.
Rocket Lab’s investigation team determined the launch, named ‘It’s a Test’, was terminated due to a data loss time out, which was caused by misconfiguration of telemetry equipment owned and operated by a third-party contractor who was supporting the launch from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1.
Four minutes into the flight, at an altitude of 224 km, the equipment lost contact with the rocket temporarily and, according to standard operating procedures, range safety officials terminated the flight. Data, including that from Rocket Lab’s own telemetry equipment, confirmed the rocket was following a nominal trajectory and the vehicle was performing as planned at the time of termination.
“We have demonstrated Electron was following its nominal trajectory and was on course to reach orbit,” said Peter Beck, Rocket Lab CEO. “While it was disappointing to see the flight terminated in essence due to an incorrect tick box, we can say we tested nearly everything, including the flight termination system. We were delighted with the amount of data we were able to collect during an exceptional first test launch.
Rocket Lab’s telemetry systems provided data verifying Electron's capabilities and provided us with high confidence ahead of our second test flight. The call to terminate a launch would be tough for anyone, and we appreciated the professionalism of the flight safety officials involved.”
The telemetry data loss that led to the termination of the flight has been directly linked to a key piece of equipment responsible for translating radio signals into data used by safety officials to track the vehicle performance. It was discovered a contractor failed to enable forward error correction on this third-party device causing extensive corruption of received position data. The failure was first indicated by the fact that Rocket Lab’s own equipment did not suffer similar data loss during launch. Further confirmation of the cause was demonstrated when replaying raw radio-frequency data - recorded on launch day - through correctly configured equipment also resolved the problem.
The fix for the issue is simple and corrective procedures have been put in place to prevent a similar issue in future. No major changes to the Electron launch vehicle hardware have been required and the company has authorized the production of four additional launch vehicles as it prepares for commercial operations ahead of the test flight program. Rocket Lab’s second Electron rocket, named ‘Still Testing’, is undergoing final checks and preparations ahead of being shipped to Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 shortly.