Rocket Lab

The road to returning astronauts to the lunar surface runs through New Zealand and a microwave-size spacecraft.

"This could unlock new opportunities for future lunar science and exploration efforts." It allows for continuous communications with Earth as it passes around the moon. The compact spacecraft will be testing new navigation systems and trying out the halo-shaped orbit around the moon that will one day be occupied by NASA's Lunar Gateway. The Gateway will be a sort of small space station circling the moon that will be used for staging for Artemis missions to the lunar surface.

The first lunar mission to take-off from NZ soil could be close. All going well, Rocket Lab will launch Nasa's Capstone micro-satellite on an Electron ...

And it was possible because Rocket Lab bought SolAero, a New Mexico maker of solar components, for US$80m ($125m) last December - the fourth of a series of purchases of North American space system makers. The mission's aim is to shed light on how Mars lost its once-habitable atmosphere. This will be the first time a Photon has headed to another celestial body. All going well, Rocket Lab will launch Nasa's Capstone micro-satellite on an Electron rockets from Mahia at 9.55pm tonight. Rocket Lab has a number of projects in the pipeline, including a contract (for an as-yet-undisclosed sum) to design and built two Photon spacecraft that will go into orbit around Mars in 2024, after being carried to the red planet by a Nasa-provided rocket. A small Rocket Lab spacecraft called the Photon will then ferry the microwave-size Capstone toward the moon, and place it in an experimental halo orbit lunar orbit (a lopsided ecliptical path that will take it as close as 1600km to the lunar surface and as far away as 68,260 km).

And if it all goes to plan it would allow the space agency to park a space station in the same orbit, which could help astronauts make their way back to the ...

The second stage of the Electron will place the payload in an initial low Earth orbit. To propel the 25 kg (55 lbs) CubeSat to the moon, Rocket Lab's Lunar ...

At this time, the spent batteries (Battery A and B) will be jettisoned to reduce mass on the stage as it continues to climb to orbit. After pad connection checkouts, fueling of the rocket with RP-1 kerosene will begin, with liquid oxygen flowing to the rocket at T-2 hours at the same time safety zones are activated for the marine space around the launch track. At T+2 minutes 41 seconds, the first stage engines will shut down, followed by the stage separation. CAPSTONE will also demonstrate the reliability of spacecraft-to-spacecraft navigation systems as well as its communications capabilities with Earth, something which will be used extensively during the crewed Artemis missions by the Orion spacecraft and Starship Human Landing System (HLS). At T+2 minutes 51 seconds, Electron’s second stage vacuum-optimized Rutherford engine will ignite, with fairings separating just 27 seconds later. The second stage of the Electron will place the payload in an initial low Earth orbit. At T-30 minutes, airspace closures will take effect for launch. Powered by green-hypergolic propellants, its onboard Hypercurie engine will place the CAPSTONE satellite on a ballistic lunar transfer orbit. This will be done using data taken by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) as a reference point. This technology will be used to evaluate CAPSTONE’s autonomous navigation software. Most importantly, an NRHO trajectory also has a continuous line of sight, or “view”, of Earth, resulting in uninterrupted communications between the spacecraft and home. Final preparations for launch will begin six hours before liftoff with the closure of the road to the launch site.

Electron launch vehicle on the pad at Launch Complex 1 for a wet dress rehearsal before the NASA + Advanced Space CAPSTONE launch .

Standing at just 59 feet tall, Electron is the smallest rocket to attempt a launch to the Moon. Rocket Lab is targeting no earlier than 09:50 UTC on June 27th for the launch of CAPSTONE, a dedicated mission to lunar orbit. The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) cubesat will be the first spacecraft to test the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around the Moon. Researchers expect this orbit to be a gravitational sweet spot in space – where the pull of gravity from Earth and the Moon interact to allow for a nearly-stable orbit – allowing physics to do most of the work of keeping a spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. NASA has big plans for this unique type of orbit.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1B on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand carrying NASA's small ...

Rocket Lab launched a rocket to the Moon's orbit on Tuesday, after a series of minor delays. The Electron rocket lifted off from the base on the Māhia ...

The launch of the Electron rocket and Photon spacecraft that will carry the Capstone satellite on its 3½ month journey to the Moon had been delayed several times from May 31, including for a software update. * Rocket Lab about to shoot for the Moon The Capstone mission will see the rocket placing a small satellite into orbit around the Moon for Nasa in what the US space agency hopes will be a step towards its later launch of a crewed lunar space station and further missions to the Moon’s surface, and potentially Mars. Electron and Photon are vertical on the pad at Launch Complex 1 for the launch of— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) #CAPSTONEfor @NASAand @AdvancedSpace It is one of the smallest orbital rockets to attempt to launch a spacecraft to lunar orbit, Rocket Lab said before the lift-off. Rocket Lab launched a rocket to the Moon’s orbit on Tuesday, after a series of minor delays.

Live coverage of the countdown and launch of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from Launch Complex 1B on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand carrying NASA's small ...

By Chris Keall. The first lunar mission to take off from NZ has launched successfully. Rocket Lab Capstone mission. Photo: YouTube / Rocket Lab.

And it was possible because Rocket Lab bought SolAero, a New Mexico maker of solar components, for US$80m ($125m) last December - the fourth of a series of purchases of North American space system makers. The mission's aim is to shed light on how Mars lost its once-habitable atmosphere. This will be the first time a Photon has headed to another celestial body. Rocket Lab did not put a value on the Glide contract, but it's part of an ongoing push to diversify its revenue from rocket launches to a lot of business in "space systems" too. Rocket Lab has a number of projects in the pipeline, including a contract (for an as-yet-undisclosed sum) to design and built two Photon spacecraft that will go into orbit around Mars in 2024, after being carried to the red planet by a Nasa-provided rocket. A small Rocket Lab spacecraft called the Photon will then ferry the microwave-size Capstone toward the moon, and place it in an experimental halo orbit lunar orbit (a lopsided ecliptical path that will take it as close as 1600km to the lunar surface and as far away as 68,260 km).

NASA's CAPSTONE mission, which will chart a new orbit around the Moon which will hopefully be used for a future crewed lunar space station, is underway ...

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If the rest of the mission is successful, the Capstone CubeSat satellite will be the first to take the new path around the Moon and send back vital ...

Congrats to the— Thomas Zurbuchen (@Dr_ThomasZ) #CAPSTONEteam for a successful launch this morning! Electron is such an amazing vehicle and the team behind it are even more so. “It will have equilibrium. The launch of the Electron rocket and Photon spacecraft that will carry the Capstone satellite on its 3½ month journey to the Moon had been delayed several times from May 31, including for a software update. The Capstone mission will see the rocket placing a small satellite into orbit around the Moon for Nasa in what the US space agency hopes will be a step towards its later launch of a crewed lunar space station and further missions to the Moon’s surface, and potentially Mars. Rocket Lab launched a rocket to the Moon on Tuesday, after a series of minor delays.

Rocket Lab launched a small spacecraft bound for the moon on Tuesday, a mission that represents firsts for both the company and NASA.

NASA turned to a small cohort of companies to make CAPSTONE happen. Once there, CAPSTONE will stay in orbit around the moon for at least six months to collect data. Gateway's success does not depend on this data, NASA's Christopher Baker, executive of the small spacecraft technology program, explained to CNBC before the launch.

The first lunar mission to take-off from NZ has launched successfully. Rocket Lab launched Nasa's Capstone micro-satellite on an Electron rockets from Mahia ...

And it was possible because Rocket Lab bought SolAero, a New Mexico maker of solar components, for US$80m ($125m) last December - the fourth of a series of purchases of North American space system makers. The mission's aim is to shed light on how Mars lost its once-habitable atmosphere. This will be the first time a Photon has headed to another celestial body. Rocket Lab did not put a value on the Glide contract, but it's part of an ongoing push to diversify its revenue from rocket launches to a lot of business in "space systems" too. Rocket Lab has a number of projects in the pipeline, including a contract (for an as-yet-undisclosed sum) to design and built two Photon spacecraft that will go into orbit around Mars in 2024, after being carried to the red planet by a Nasa-provided rocket. A small Rocket Lab spacecraft called the Photon will then ferry the microwave-size Capstone toward the moon, and place it in an experimental halo orbit lunar orbit (a lopsided ecliptical path that will take it as close as 1600km to the lunar surface and as far away as 68,260 km).

The first lunar mission to take-off from NZ has launched successfully. Rocket Lab launched Nasa's Capstone micro-satellite on an Electron rockets from Mahia ...

And it was possible because Rocket Lab bought SolAero, a New Mexico maker of solar components, for US$80m ($125m) last December - the fourth of a series of purchases of North American space system makers. The mission's aim is to shed light on how Mars lost its once-habitable atmosphere. This will be the first time a Photon has headed to another celestial body. Rocket Lab did not put a value on the Glide contract, but it's part of an ongoing push to diversify its revenue from rocket launches to a lot of business in "space systems" too. Rocket Lab has a number of projects in the pipeline, including a contract (for an as-yet-undisclosed sum) to design and built two Photon spacecraft that will go into orbit around Mars in 2024, after being carried to the red planet by a Nasa-provided rocket. All going to plan, on November 13 it will place Capstone into an experimental halo orbit lunar orbit (a lopsided ecliptical path that will take it as close as 1600km to the lunar surface and as far away as 68,260 km).

The first ever lunar launch on New Zealand soil was launched from Mahia Peninsula at 9.55pm on Tuesday. The "microwave-oven-sized satellite", CAPSTONE, was " ...

The "microwave-oven-sized satellite", CAPSTONE, was "designed to test a new orbit around the moon for NASA", Rocket Lab said in a media release. Founder Peter Beck described it as an "important step in humanity's return to the moon". Kiwi-founded aerospace company Rocket Lab has successfully launched a NASA satellite headed to the moon.

Auckland University cosmology PhD student Yourong "Frank" Wang captured the above long-exposure image as a Rocket Lab Electron took off from Mahia at 9.55pm ...

And it was possible because Rocket Lab bought SolAero, a New Mexico maker of solar components, for US$80m ($125m) last December - the fourth of a series of purchases of North American space system makers. The highest altitude Electron has deployed a spacecraft to date is 1200km," Rocket Lab founder and CEO told the Herald earlier. "This is the most complex and high-risk mission Rocket Lab has ever flown. The mission's aim is to shed light on how Mars lost its once-habitable atmosphere. It's also the cheapest, by some margin. It's the first lunar mission launched from NZ soil, and the Electron is the smallest rocket ever used for a moon mission.

The successful launch of a NASA lunar cubesat mission could enable “ridiculously low cost” planetary missions, Rocket Lab's CEO says.

“It’s purely down to getting the technique right and just all the mission operations that go into that.” Beck also said that Rocket Lab will try again relatively soon to perform a midair recovery of an Electron booster. “This was just next-level hard,” Beck said of the overall mission. “That’s really hard to do in a small engine, and the mass margins were so tight,” he said. He said the company’s launch rate is paced by when customers, and not launch vehicles, are ready to fly. We’ve never run the engines as hard as we ran them tonight,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview a few hours after the launch, which took place in the evening in New Zealand. “We put the Lunar Photon exactly where it needed to be and we had some performance left over in the vehicle.”

Rocket Lab says there is still much to learn from the Moon 50 years after humans last stepped foot on it. Rocket Lab Capstone mission.

"It was a fantastic launch, you couldn't ask for better performance" - Morgan Bailey "It was a fantastic launch, you couldn't ask for better performance" - Morgan Bailey duration 4:30 Bailey said the Moon had its heyday in the 1960s and 1970s and we have not been back there in 53 years.