Unlucky 13: Heartache as satellite cargo flight fails
Every rocket has a failure at some point and this probably “hurts our pride more than anything”, said Rocket Lab co-founder and chief executive Peter Beck of yesterday’s mission failure — the company’s first after 12 successful flights.
The rocket burned up on reentering the atmosphere after an anomaly in late-stage flight after takeoff from the Mahia Peninsula launch pad yesterday morning.
And although the cost of the rocket and its lost high-tech payload is significant, customers are expected to be insured.
Beck said it was a tough day for the company and its staff.
“We will leave no stone unturned to figure out what happened today so we can learn from it and get back to the pad as soon as possible.
“This is something that we always prepare for but never want to experience. But we are ready for rapid return to flight as soon as these investigations are complete.”
Beck said the rocket launch itself, not including the satellite equipment on board, started at US$7.5 million ($11.5m).
The primary payload for the launch was a 67kg imaging satellite built by Canon Electronics, capable of taking images with a resolution of 90cm, and intended to demonstrate the spacecraft’s technologies as the company prepared mass production of similar satellites.
The mission, named “Pics Or It Didn’t Happen”, also included five shoebox-sized Earth observation satellites, for San Francisco company Planet, designed to image Earth from above.
“The financial loss here is generally covered from our customers by insurance,” Beck said.
“The bigger loss for us as a company is the time that it’s going to take for us to investigate fully and make the corrective actions to the launch vehicle. So we won’t put another vehicle in the sky until we are really, really happy. We’ve got tens of thousands of data streams to trawl through to make those corrections.
“We were the fourth most launched rocket in the world last year and this is something we always prepared for. Every rocket has a failure at some point, so this probably hurts our pride a lot more than anything.
“But this doesn’t really affect our business or viability thereof in any way.”
He said the company would leave no stone unturned to figure out what happened and get back to the launchpad.
The company had been planning a launch every month for the rest of the year.
“One thing that is important to remember is Electron is one of the most frequently launched rockets in the world today and we’ve had 12 consecutive launches to space and this is a bit of a reminder about how hard this is.”
Rocket Lab’s launch came just three weeks after its most recent mission and was brought forward a day because of bad weather due this week.
Since its inception, Rocket Lab has put 53 spacecraft into low-Earth orbit on 12 separate missions. This weekend’s launch was the third for Rocket Lab this year.
“Let me put it this way, I’m not naming anything after the number 13 ever again and I’m not a superstitious person,” Beck said when asked to give comment on the unlucky number and in reference to Apollo 13 moon flight that failed two days into the mission.