2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
Aerospace company Rocket Lab will conduct the first test launch of an Electron rocket in May 2017. Reported by The Verge.
To date, due to their small mass, small satellites are launched in the overwhelming majority of cases "at the same time" - they are taken on board as an additional load when launching other, larger, spacecraft. Because of this, the owners of small satellites are forced to wait for the next launch of larger vehicles and adapt to deadlines that may not always be convenient. In this regard, some aerospace companies are building light rockets that will be used to launch small loads into orbit.
Rocket Lab has been developing the Electron light launch vehicle for the past four years. The rocket will be able to launch a load weighing 150 kilograms into a sun-synchronous orbit or up to 225 kilograms into low-earth orbit. One of the first commercial uses of Electron would be to send the MX-1E to the moon in the second half of 2017, but to date, Rocket Lab has never launched a rocket.
The first test flight of Electron is scheduled for a 10-day launch window, which will open on May 21 at 20:00 Moscow time. The rocket will be launched from a launch pad in New Zealand. In the future, Rocket Lab will make two more test launches, and then move on to commercial launches.
There are also other projects of light launch vehicles. For example, Vector-R, which Vector Space Systems first launched in early May 2017. Or LauncherOne, developed by Virgin Galactic. It is noteworthy that to launch LauncherOne, the company will use a converted Boeing 747-400 as a carrier aircraft, and a launch vehicle launched in this way is capable of delivering up to 200 kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit.
