Startup revs up for reusable rocket race

Rocket Lab plans reusable booster for sat launches

BEIJING, Aug 10, (RTRS): Chinese startup LinkSpace on Saturday completed its third test of a reusable rocket in five months, stepping up the pace in China’s race to develop a technology key to cheap space launches in an expected global boom in satellite deployment.

LinkSpace’s RLV-T5 rocket blasted off in a desert in western Qinghai province at 0230 GMT. It flew as high as 300 metres (984 feet) before returning to the launchpad on its own after 50 seconds, CEO Hu Zhenyu, 26, told Reuters.

The Beijing-based company aims to conduct a “kilometre-level” test at some point, Hu said.

The RLV-T5 previously hovered 20 metres and 40 metres above the ground in two tests in March and April respectively.

China envisions constellations of commercial satellites that can offer services ranging from high-speed internet for aircraft and rural areas to tracking coal shipments and commuter traffic.

Reliable, low-cost and frequent launches will be key, with recoverable or partially-recoverable rockets like the Falcon 9 from Elon Musk’s SpaceX one pathway to eventually affordable satellite deployment missions.

SpaceX has already used recoverable rockets on a number of orbital

“This double birth is wonderful news for this extraordinary species that is still threatened today,” Eric Domb, the president and founder of Pairi Daiza, said in a statement.

The newborns will be watched around the clock and could be alternately placed in an incubator and bottle-fed to help the mother rest, the zoo said. (RTRS)

Indians plant 220m trees:

More than a million Indians have planted 220 million trees in a single day in a government cammissions since a historic launch early in 2017, spurring Europe, Russia, Japan and China to speed up their own research into the technology or at least consider studying it.

LinkSpace’s test flight on Saturday came on the heels of a historic delivery of a satellite into orbit last month by privately owned Chinese firm iSpace.

Beijing-based iSpace told Reuters last week that it was also planning to launch a recoverable rocket, in 2021.

The reusable design of its nextgeneration rocket could lead to a predicted cost reduction of 70%, iSpace estimated.

LinkSpace previously told Reuters it hoped to charge no more than 30 million yuan ($4.25 million) per reusable launch.

That’s a fraction of the $25 million to $30 million needed for a launch on a Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems Pegasus, a commonly used small rocket. The Pegasus is launched from a high-altitude aircraft and is not reusable.

Small-satellite launch firm Rocket Lab has announced last Tuesday that a plan to recover the core booster of its Electron rocket using a helicopter, a bold cost-saving concept that, if successful, would make it the second company after Elon Musk’s SpaceX to reuse an orbital-class rocket booster.

“Electron is going reusable,” Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck said during a presentation in Utah, showing an animation of the rocket sending a payload into a shallow orbit before speeding back through Earth’s atmosphere. “Launch frequency is the absolute key here.”

The Auckland, New Zealand-based company is one of a growing cadre of launch companies looking to slash the cost of sending shoebox-sized satellites to low Earth orbit, building smaller rockets and reinventing traditional production lines to meet a growing payload demand.

Electron, which has flown seven missions so far, can send up to 496 pounds (225 kg) into space for roughly $7 million. Medium-class launchers such as Los Angeles-based Relativity Space can send up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kg) into space for $10 million while Cedar Park, Texas-based firm Firefly can do it for $15 million.

Unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, which reignites its engines to land steadily back on Earth “propulsively” after much larger missions costing around $62 million, Rocket Lab’s Electron will deploy a series of parachutes to slow its fall through what Beck called “the wall” — the violently fast and burning hot reentry process the booster endures shooting back through Earth’s atmosphere.

paign to tackle climate change and improve the environment in the country’s most populated state.

Forest official Bivhas Ranjan says students, lawmakers, officials and others planted dozens of species of saplings Friday along roads, rail tracks and in forest lands in northern Uttar Pradesh state. The target of 220 million saplings was achieved by 5 pm.

Ranjan says the trees will increase forest cover in the state, which has a population of more than 200 million. (AP)