"It has been an incredible day and I'm
immensely proud of our talented team," said
Peter Beck,
CEO and founder of Rocket Lab. "We're one of
a few companies to ever develop a rocket
from scratch and we did it in under four
years. We've worked tirelessly to get to
this point. We've developed everything in
house, built the world's first private
orbital launch range, and we've done it with
a small team.
"It was a great flight. We had a great
first stage burn, stage separation, second
stage ignition and fairing separation. We
didn't quite reach orbit and we'll be
investigating why, however reaching space in
our first test puts us in an incredibly
strong position to accelerate the commercial
phase of our program, deliver our customers
to orbit and make space open for business,"
says Beck.
Over the coming weeks, Rocket Lab's
engineers in
Los Angeles and
Auckland, New Zealand will
work through the 25,000 data channels that
were collected during the test flight. The
results will inform measures taken to
optimize the vehicle.
"We have learnt so much through this test
launch and will learn even more in the weeks
to come. We're committed to making space
accessible and this is a phenomenal
milestone in that journey. The applications
doing this will open up are endless. Known
applications include improved weather
reporting, Internet from space, natural
disaster prediction, up-to-date maritime
data as well as search and rescue services,"
says Beck.
Today's launch was the first of three
test flights scheduled for this year. Rocket
Lab will target getting to orbit on the
second test and look to maximize the payload
the rocket can carry.
At full production, Rocket Lab expects to
launch more than 50 times a year, and is
regulated to launch up to 120 times a year.
In comparison, there were 22 launches last
year from
the United States, and 82
internationally.
Rocket Lab's commercial phase will see
Electron fly already-signed customers
including NASA, Spire, Planet, Moon Express
and Spaceflight.
