How do you catch a falling rocket? Simple. With a helicopter

SMALL rocket builder Rocket Lab USA Inc is gearing up for a mission that seems more appropriate for a big-budget action movie: catching a falling four-storey-tall rocket booster with a helicopter.

The Long Beach, California-based company is trying to slash the cost of spaceflight by reusing its rockets, a trend pioneered by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

But unlike SpaceX’s reusable, twostage rocket Falcon 9, which reignites its engines to return to Earth, Rocket Lab aims for a helicopter with two pilots to pluck a 11.9 metre-tall booster stage from mid-air using a combination of ropes, parachutes and a heatshield.

“I’m pretty confident that if the helicopter pilots can see it, they’ll catch it,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said. “If we don’t get it this time, we’ll learn a bunch and we’ll get it the next time, so I’m not super worried.”

Hinging on good weather, the capture test is due to take place off the coast of Mahia, New Zealand, the location of Rocket Lab’s primary launch site this week.

Recovering rocket boosters via parachutes and helicopters instead of using its engines to land vertically means the rocket does not need to save extra – and heavy – fuel for a “propulsive” landing like SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Rocket Lab’s helicopter capture test is set to take place after the company’s Electron rocket launches 34 small satellites in a mission Rocket Lab named “There and Back Again”.