Rocket Lab shoots for the Moon . . . and beyond
We’re counting down to the first Moon mission to be launched from New Zealand soil.
Nasa yesterday put a new date on its Capstone mission to lunar orbit — May — and released an animation of how its Rocket Lab-launched microsatellite will look in orbit around the Moon.
One of Rocket Lab’s Electron rockets will launch the Nasa microsat from Mahia, then one of the KiwiAmerican company’s Photon spacecraft will ferry it into lunar orbit.
The special, experimental orbit will bring Capstone within 1600km of one lunar pole on its near pass and 70,000 from the other pole at its peak every seven days — requiring less propulsion capability for spacecraft flying to and from the Moon’s surface than other circular orbits, according to Nasa’s briefing.
The mission is laying the groundwork for Nasa’s planned “Gateway” small space station, which will follow the same “Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit” around the Moon.
Both missions are part of Nasa’s wider Artemis programme to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2025, all going to schedule (which it hasn’t so far, amid the pandemic. Capstone was previously planned for “late 2021”).
The earlier generation of Moon missions involved multi-million budgets. But thanks to the march of technology — and some Kiwi no.8 wire thinking — the Capstone microsat will go into lunar orbit on a microbudget, in aerospace terms.
Rocket Lab earlier disclosed its Capstone contract was worth US$9/ 95 million ($14m).
A lot more work is on the way, however, including a 2024 mission to Mars, which will see two Nasa-funded Rocket Lab Photons go into orbit around the Red Planet (Rocket Lab says it won’t put a dollar-value on that contract until closer to launch).
And at its fourth-quarter results briefing last week, Rocket Lab said its overall forward-bookings for launches and space services had swelled from US$82m at the end of 2020 to US$241m by December 31, 2021 and today stands at US$545m — thanks in large part to a US$143m contract, announced this week, to design and manufacture 17 half-tonne satellites for North American communications network operator GlobalStar.
But despite its fatter contract book, and a strong revenue increase for the December quarter, Rocket Lab’s Nasdaq-listed stock continued to be under pressure, caught up in the pullback of the Ukraine crisis and inflation fears. Shares closed down 0.94 per cent to US$8.40 on Friday for a US$3.8 billion market cap.