The Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 2 a.m. Eastern on July 29, successfully launching an experimental satellite for the U.S. Space Force, after suffering a failure in mid-May.
The demonstration satellite – called Monolith – is sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory, and was deployed 52 minutes after liftoff into a 600-kilometer (378 miles) orbit at an inclination of 37 degrees, reports Space News.
“We are off the pad and on our way to space once again, with successful liftoff from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1,” Rocket Lab senior communication advisor Murielle Baker said during a live webcast of the launch.
With Monolith now in orbit, its mission will be “to explore and demonstrate the use of a deployable sensor, where the sensor’s mass is a substantial fraction of the total mass of the spacecraft, changing the spacecraft’s dynamic properties and testing ability to maintain spacecraft attitude control,” Rocket Lab representatives wrote in a mission press kit.
The 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron rocket provides dedicated rides to space for small satellites. The rocket now has 21 launches under its belt, including four this year.
On May 15, an Electron rocket launch did not go well. The rocket’s second stage shut down too early, resulting in the loss of the mission’s payload, two satellites for the geospatial intelligence company BlackSky Global. That failure was the second in less than a year for the Electron and the third in 20 launches.
The problem was traced back to an upper-stage engine igniter. “This induced a corruption of signals within the engine computer that caused the Rutherford engine’s thrust vector control (TVC) to deviate outside nominal parameters and resulted in the engine computer commanding zero pump speed, shutting down the engine,” company representatives wrote in an anomaly update on July 19.
The fix for the igniter problem amounted to implementing “redundancies in the ignition system to prevent any future reoccurrence, including modifications to the igniter’s design and manufacture,” they added.
Folks may remember that Rocket Lab has great fun in naming their missions. In the case of this latest mission, the team took into account that the U.S. Department of Defense’s Space Test Program and the Rocket Systems Launch Program are both based at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
And New Mexico is famous for its green chiles and chile-infused cuisine, which explains the name Rocket Lab gave to the mission: “It’s A Little Chile Up Here.”
