Rocket Lab just took another step toward booster reusability.
Rocket Lab fired up a Rutherford engine from one of its space-flown Electron boosters this week for the very first time. The test fire is a milestone in the company’s efforts to create boosters that can go to space and back again repeatedly, as the first stages of SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 already do.
Early data from the 200-second test fire show that the engine “performed to the same standard of a newly built Rutherford engine,” Rocket Lab officials stated (opens in new tab) in a press release on Thursday (Sept. 1).
Related: Rocket Lab and its Electron booster (photos)
Electron is designed to give small satellites dedicated rides to orbit. The 59-foot-tall (18 meters) rocket features nine Rutherford engines in its first stage and one Rutherford in its upper stage, as well as a smaller Curie engine in an optional third or “kick” stage.
Rocket Lab is working to make Electron first stages reusable. The ultimate goal is to snag falling boosters with a helicopter shortly after liftoff — something it accomplished during a mission in May of this year. The chopper soon dropped the booster into the Pacific Ocean, but Rocket Lab retrieved it with a boat and hauled it back to shore.
And that’s the booster that donated the Rutherford engine for this week’s test.
“If we can achieve this high level of performance from engine components recovered from the ocean, then I’m optimistic and incredibly excited about what we can do when we bring back dry engines under a helicopter next time,” Rocket Lab founder and CEO Beck said in Thursday’s press release.
Rocket Lab is also working on a next-generation rocket called Neutron for bigger payloads, like the broadband satellites built for internet megaconstellations. A “fulsome update” about Neutron is expected on Sept. 21, according to past comments from Beck.
Rocket Lab is also moving farther out into space, having recently launched NASA’s CAPSTONE cubesat on a trip toward lunar orbit. A private mission to Venus next year is in the works on another Electron.
The company’s last launch, nearly a month ago, lofted a U.S. military satellite to orbit on Aug. 4.
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