Rocket Lab takes it on the chin
This past weekend was a multi-launch affair, but one of those did not go as planned. Rocket Lab’s 20th Electron launch ended in failure when the vehicle’s second stage engines ignited briefly, but then cut off much quicker than they should have due to an “anomaly.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened to Rocket Lab, either: During the company’s 13th Electron launch on July 4, 2020, an early second-stage engine cutoff also caused a total loss of vehicle and payload, resulting in mission failure.
As with that mission, Rocket Lab will complete an investigation to determine the cause of the problem and then issue corrective action. Hopefully the apparent similarities don’t actually point to a similar cause, because Rocket Lab’s fix for the last time this happened is obviously supposed to have prevented that same thing from happening again.
In happier news for Rocket Lab, the mission also included a first stage booster recovery attempt, and the first stage did indeed return to Earth and descend to the Pacific Ocean slowed by a parachute for a pick-up by the company’s recovery team. This secondary mission is in service of Rocket Lab’s attempts to go fully reusable with its Electron booster.
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