Electron Rocket's Maiden Flight to Space

Rocket Lab Sets a Date for the Electron Rocket's Maiden Flight to Space

The Electron rocket will fly for the first time by the end of the month.

Rocket Lab
 
By Jay Bennett

Rocket Lab, an American spaceflight company with a subsidiary division in New Zealand, is gearing up for the debut of its small launch vehicle, the two-stage Electron rocket. The company recently announced it will open a 10-day launch window starting May 21 to launch the first Electron from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula of New Zealand's North Island.

The maiden flight of the Electron rocket, which the company has dubbed "It's a Test," will launch a small test payload to an elliptical orbit between 300 and 500 km above the Earth at an 83-degree inclination, the company said. If successful, the flight of Electron will be the first time a vehicle has been launched into orbit from a private launch facility.

"We are all incredibly excited to get to this point. Our talented team has been preparing for years for this opportunity and we want to do our best to get it right," said Peter Beck, Founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, in a press release. "Our number one priority is to gather enough data and experience to prepare for a commercial phase. Only then can we can start delivering on our mission to make space more accessible."


Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula.
Rocket Lab

The Electron rocket, made almost entirely of composite materials, uses some 3D-printed engine components and is designed to take small commercial payloads such as cubesats to orbit. Standing 56 feet tall, Electron will put out around 36,000 lbs. of thrust. Compared to SpaceX's Falcon 9, which stands as tall as 260 feet and can put out as much as 1,710,000 pounds of thrust, the Electron is a small bird. But Rocket Lab is aiming to charge $4.9 million per launch compared to the $62 million or so that SpaceX charges for a ride on the Falcon 9. Ultimately, Rocket Lab is hoping to launch hundreds of small payloads a year, opening up space research to a wide field of engineers and scientists.

Rocket Lab was founded back in 2006, and after more than a decade of research and development, it's finally time for the company to light up the Electron and let her fly. The first flight of the Electron rocket is of particular importance to Moon Express, a team of American engineers racing to put a lunar lander on the surface of the moon to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition. Moon Express, or MoonEx, has developed a small lunar lander called the MX-1, and the company contracted Rocket Lab back in 2015 for three flights to the moon, two of which are slated to occur before the end of 2017.

To win the first place prize of $20 million, MoonEx needs to land one of their MX-1 lunar landers on the moon, have it travel at least 500 meters across the surface of the moon, and transmit video and photos back to Earth. Rather than drive a lunar rover, MoonEx plans to have the MX-1 spacecraft take off again after landing and "hop" to a new location on the moon, the company has previously said. MoonEx purchased three launches from Rocket Lab for redundancy in case the first or second mission fails, but if the team is going to win the Lunar X Prize before the year is out, the Electron needs to fly, and it needs to fly soon.

The upcoming Electron launch is the first of three planned test flights before commercial missions begin. The launch window will remain open for a full 10 days to account for any possible delays due to weather or pre-flight malfunctions. "During this first launch attempt it is possible we will scrub multiple attempts as we wait until we are ready and conditions are favorable," Beck says.