Rocket Lab has just launched seven small satellites into Earth’s orbit, including one of its own spacecraft designed to help pave the way for future missions to Venus and the moon.
The Rocket Lab Electron Booster took off from the company’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on Monday (March 22) at 6:30 pm EDT (10:30 pm GMT, or 11:30 am March 23, local time), on a mission called “They Go Up So Fast”.
“They really go up really fast, with a nice Electron takeoff from the platform at Launch Complex 1,” said Rocket Lab’s propulsion engineering manager, Scott Mohler, during today’s launch webcast. (Launch complex 2, which Rocket Lab recently finished building in Virginia, is due to make its first takeoff this year.)
In photos: Rocket Lab and its electron booster
“They Go Up So Fast” was the 19th general electron launch, and its seven payloads bring the total number of loft satellites from the 58-foot (18-meter) high booster to 104, Rocket Lab officials said.
The seven charges that entered orbit on Monday are very diverse. There is an Earth observation microsatellite for the company BlackSky, for example, and two “Internet of Things“nanosatellites, one for Fleet Space and another for Myriota.
Three experimental satellites were also on board – one for the Canberra Space at the University of New South Wales, a demonstration of Utah Weather-based weather satellite technology, and a technology demonstration hub for the Space Defense Command and US Army (SMDC) missiles
The SMDC Cube, called Gunsmoke-J, “will test technologies that support the development of new capabilities for the U.S. Army,” Rocket Lab representatives wrote in the mission press kit, which you can find on here.
The seventh payload was one of Rocket Lab’s own photon satellites. The spacecraft, which the company calls “Pathstone”, is the second photon to enter orbit, after the “First Light” vehicle, which released in August 2020.
Like First Light, Pathstone will undertake a risk reduction mission in Earth’s orbit.
“Photon Pathstone will demonstrate energy management, thermal control and attitude control subsystems, as well as new integrated technologies, including deep space radio capability, an updated RCS (reaction control system) to accurately aim in space and solar sensors and star trackers, “Rocket Lab Representatives wrote in a mission description.
This work will help Rocket Lab prepare for Photon missions to distant destinations. NASA has already booked a trip to the moon via electron and photon for its CAPSTONE (“Navigation Experience and Technology Operations of the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System”) Cubosat, a mission that is scheduled to be launched later this year.
And Rocket Lab plans to start launching self-financing Venus Missions in the coming years using the pair Electron-Photon.
The company is also working to make the first stage of Electron reusable, even recovering a reinforcement on a previous mission. But Rocket Lab did not recover the reinforcement today in “They Go Up So Fast”.
This story was updated at 20:00 EDT on March 22 with details of the launch webcast.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book on the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.