РН Electron от новозеландской Rocket Lab

Автор Тангаж, 05.03.2015 17:53:41

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tnt22

Цитировать Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 1 ч. назад

Rocket Lab plans a second Electron launch no sooner than early October; if successful, they'll go directly into commercial service.

tnt22

http://spacenews.com/telemetry-glitch-kept-first-electron-rocket-from-reaching-orbit/
ЦитироватьTelemetry glitch kept first Electron rocket from reaching orbit
by Jeff Foust — August 7, 2017


The first Electron rocket lifts off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand launch site May 25. Credit: Rocket Lab

LOGAN, Utah — Rocket Lab blamed the failure of its first Electron rocket to reach orbit on a telemetry glitch in ground equipment that can be easily corrected, keeping the company on track to begin commercial launches by the end of this year.

In a statement released late Aug. 6, the U.S.-New Zealand company said its Electron rocket was flying as planned on its May 25 inaugural launch when a dropout of telemetry from the vehicle required range safety officials to terminate the flight four minutes after liftoff, at an altitude of 224 kilometers.
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The company said that a third-party contractor supporting the launch misconfigured ground equipment that translated radio signals from the rocket into data used by range safety officials. That caused "extensive corruption of received position data," resulting in the data loss that led safety officials to trigger the rocket's flight termination system.

"It's a very, very easy thing to fix. You literally tick a box in some software," said Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, in an Aug. 6 interview during the 31st Annual Conference on Small Satellites here. "It's more about working with our contractors to ensure that we have better oversight of their services."

The company did not disclose the name of the contractor who made the software configuration error. Beck did say that Rocket Lab would continue to use that company on its future launches.

Rocket Lab's separate telemetry stream, unaffected by the software glitch, showed that the rocket was performing as planned up until the flight was terminated. "We have demonstrated Electron was following its nominal trajectory and was on course to reach orbit," Beck said in the company's statement.

In the interview, Beck noted that the company found the problem "very quickly" when reviewing the data collected from the launch. He said the company waited until now to disclose the cause until it completed a review of all the data. "We had to explore all of the possible branches of the fault tree" of possible causes of the failure, he said.

That review found no issues with the vehicle during the launch that require changes to future Electron vehicles. "We were very happy with the vehicle and the vehicle's performance," he said. "There's almost no hardware changes."

The second Electron, Beck said, will be rolled out to its New Zealand launch pad in about eight weeks, or early October. "There's still quite some preparation of the launch vehicle once it's on the pad," he said. "Hopefully we'll turn it a bit quicker this time."

That launch, like the first, will be a test flight without a commercial payload. Rocket Lab originally planned to carry out three test flights of the Electron before starting commercial missions, but Beck said that if the next launch is a complete success, the company will skip the third test flight and move into commercial missions.

"Running another test flight won't actually achieve much for us other than statistics," he said. "Provided the second test flight goes well then we'll accelerate directly into commercial operations."

That schedule, he said, would allow a first commercial launch by the end of the year. That schedule is particularly essential to Moon Express, which plans to launch its MX-1E lunar lander on an Electron to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize. The prize rules require teams to launch their landers by the end of this year.

"We're in a good position to fulfill that customer, for sure," Beck said of Moon Express.

Other customers on Rocket Lab's manifest will likely slip to 2018. One customer, NASA, had awarded Rocket Lab will a Venture Class Launch Services contract in late 2015. Earlier this summer NASA said that mission, designated by the agency as Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) 19, was scheduled for November. In several presentations at a pre-conference workshop here Aug. 5 and 6, organizations developing cubesats that will fly on ELaNa 19 said they expected the launch to take place some time in early 2018.

Beck said that the company's goal for 2018 was to perform one Electron launch a month. However, he acknowledged, "it will take us a while to get to one a month" as it ramps of production at facilities in New Zealand and California.

Despite not making it to orbit on the first Electron, Beck said he was "immensely proud" of what the company has accomplished. "The vehicle performed very well, and now we're just cruising home to orbit," he said.
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tnt22

Цитировать Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 21 мин. назад

Skrobot showed chart of upcoming Educational Launch of Nanosatellites missions. (Some dates will change...) #smallsat

Димитър

Как я понял - в начале октября второй тестовой полет, а в ноябре - уже полет с коммерческой нагрузкой (10 кубесатов). Если все пойдет хорошо, конечно.

tnt22

Цитировать Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 46 мин. назад

Peter Beck, on difficulties building Rocket Lab's launch site: if anyone is thinking about building own pad, I advise against it. #smallsat


43 мин. назад

Beck: all 9 Rutherford engines in Electron 1st stage performed above targets. Second stage engine also worked normally. #smallsat


41 мин. назад

Beck: estimated rocket would have reached 508x290 km orbit if not terminated; goal was 500x300 km. #smallsat


38 мин. назад

Beck: Rocket Lab giving away 3U cubesat assignment on future flight at the conference to the "coolest" payload. (He judges that.) #smallsat


34 мин. назад

Beck: goal of doing weekly launches; might be tough if smallsat constellations go away but still see significant demand. #smallsat

tnt22

Цитировать Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 35 мин. назад

For those interested in mission patches, the one for Rocket Lab's 2nd launch, called "Still Testing." #smallsat

Bell

Эта... у нас тут чего? Маленькая революция нарисовалась? :)
Иногда мне кажется что мы черти, которые штурмуют небеса (с) фон Браун

silentpom

да ладно, так микрофалкон с блэкджеком и батарейками

tnt22


tnt22

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/08/13/rocket-lab-finishes-test-flight-inquiry-plans-second-launch-later-this-year/
ЦитироватьRocket Lab finishes test flight inquiry, plans second launch later this year
August 13, 2017 Stephen Clark

The inaugural test flight of Rocket Lab's commercial small satellite booster in May fell short of orbit because a software programming error on a piece of ground equipment led a safety officer to send a premature termination command, and the company is planning to deliver the next Electron vehicle to its New Zealand launch pad in October.

Engineers identified no significant problems with the Electron rocket's performance on the May 25 test launch, raising confidence in the chances the second flight could attain the velocity needed to reach an orbit around Earth, said Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab.
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The first Electron rocket took off May 25 fr om a launch base in New Zealand. Credit: Rocket Lab

"We're very happy with the performance of the vehicle," Beck said in an interview with Spaceflight Now. "The flight was a heavily instrumented flight. It had something like 25,000 channels of data and instruments on-board, and the data that we were able to obtain was exceptionally good, and it enabled us to validate all the engineering decisions and performances of the vehicle, the thermal environment, the structural environment."

The collection of vibration, structural and environmental measurements was the primary goal of the May test flight, which lifted off from Rocket Lab's privately-operated launch pad on Mahia Peninsula, a piece of land on the east cost of New Zealand's North Island.

"We captured all the data we needed," Beck said.

The Electron rocket soared to an altitude of 139 miles (224 kilometers) before a piece of ground tracking equipment faltered, erroneously leading a range safety officer to terminate the launch to ensure the launcher did not stray from its pre-approved flight path.

Beck said the tracking system was provided by an independent contractor, but he declined to identify the owner of the equipment.

The ground hardware was incorrectly programmed, according to Rocket Lab, causing position data it received from the Electron booster to be corrupted. The equipment was designed to translate radio signals into data for safety officials to track the rocket, the company said in a statement.

The contractor failed to enable forward error correction on the tracking device, Rocket Lab said.

The tracking hiccup occurred around four minutes after liftoff as the rocket climbed into space on a southerly trajectory from Mahia Peninsula. By that point in the flight, the Electron's nine Rutherford main engines, which generated more than 40,000 pounds of combined thrust at full power, had switched off and the first stage had jettisoned to fall into the Pacific Ocean.

The second stage's single Rutherford engine ignited and the rocket's payload fairing separated as expected before the tracking error led to the premature end of the mission.

Investigators determined that Rocket Lab's own equipment did not suffer the same data loss during the mission, officials said. Engineers also replayed flight data recorded on launch day through the third-party tracking system when it was correctly configured, and the problem disappeared.


Peter Beck, founder and CEO of Rocket Lab. Credit: Rocket Lab

The flight safety officer inside Rocket Lab's launch control center followed established procedures and sent the command to shut down the Electron's second stage engine after the data dropout.

"Basically what happened is the contractor misconfigured the software, which resulted in the antennas losing track of the vehicle," Beck said. "Of course, when that happens, the flight safety officers who are looking at a computer screen at their console, the rocket disappears off their console, so they had no other option than to terminate the vehicle."

Rocket Lab said it will deliver the results of its inquiry to the Federal Aviation Administration, the regulatory authority responsible for licensing commercial Electron launches.

With a launch base, control center and factory in New Zealand, Rocket Lab also has a headquarters in Southern California, wh ere it is outfitting a second rocket assembly plant. Eventually aiming to launch as often as once per week, the U.S.-New Zealand operates under the regulatory umbrella of the FAA.

"Even though the engine stopped (after the termination command), the vehicle didn't stop," Beck said. "It went on and continued to do all its normal things as it would on orbit. We were able to test absolutely everything, even though we didn't make it to orbit. We tested all the RCS (Reaction Control System) and all the orbital systems, and unfortunately, we also tested the flight termination system, so we can say that we tested absolutely everything on the vehicle."

Some outside observers noticed the rocket develop a steady roll in video replays of the launch. That was intended, according to Beck.

"The bottom line on that one is the guidance team didn't want to over-constrain the roll," Beck said. "The roll is the least damped axis. When you've got nine engines on the bottom, theres' a lot of plume-plume interaction. The nine engines sort of interact with each other, and it's very easy to cause roll torques."

Rocket Lab's guidance team opted to let the launcher roll to a pre-programmed rate, giving engineers a chance to study the torques generated by the interplay of the Electron's nine first stage engines.

"On the next flight, we probably won't run that same algorithm, or we'll keep the vehicle in one attitude, but for us, it was all part of the test program to learn and to characterize all those weird torques that are impossible to try and learn on the ground," Beck said.

The Electron rocket was designed to deliver small satellites weighing up to 330 pounds (150 kilograms) to a circular sun-synchronous orbit around 310 miles (500 kilometers) above Earth. Standing 55 feet (17 meters) tall, the two-stage launcher burns a mixture of kerosene and cryogenic liquid oxygen propellants.


The first Electron rocket sitting horizontal at Rocket Lab's launch pad in New Zealand. Credit: Rocket Lab
 
The company says it will charge $4.9 million per Electron flight, significantly less than any other launch provider flying today, and offer a dedicated ride for payloads that currently must ride piggyback with a larger payload.

With money from venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and New Zealand, along with a strategic investment from Lockheed Martin and the government of New Zealand, Rocket Lab completed the design and qualification of the Electron rocket with less than $100 million since the company was established in 2006, according to Beck.

A further round of venture capital financing early this year brought the total investment in Rocket Lab to $148 million, valuing the company at more than $1 billion.

Rocket Lab is one of several companies — alongside start-ups and spinoffs like Virgin Orbit and the now-defunct Texas-based rocket developer Firefly — that have been established in recent years to meet demand for launches in the small satellite market.

The second of Rocket Lab's three planned test flights is scheduled later this year. If that launch goes well, the company will likely delete the third demonstration mission, and the first commercial Electron flight could be ready for takeoff by the end of December, Beck said last week.

"We've got the next test flight rolling out out to the pad in about eight weeks' time," Beck said. "If it's a really good clean flight, we'll probably accelerate into commercial operations."

Once Rocket Lab delivers the next Electron rocket to the launch pad, ground crews will spend several weeks readying the booster, rehearsing countdown procedures, and verifying all of the vehicle's sensors and instruments are functioning.

"This vehicle, again, has on the order of 25,000 or 30,000 sensors, so for us these flights are all about gathering data, so there's a lot of 'go-no go' criteria around those sensors," Beck said. "Usually, it takes us a good couple of weeks to get all that buttoned up, and then we'll be ready to launch."

One of Rocket Lab's first commercial missions is set to send a robotic lunar lander into space for Moon Express, a Florida-based aerospace developer vying to win the Google Lunar X-Prize, which requires a successful landing on the moon by the end of 2017.

Beck told Spaceflight Now that Rocket Lab will be able to support the launch for Moon Express this year, assuming the lunar payload is ready, but the company will not rush into the second test flight.

"I'm conscious that these are still test flights, and we operate in a very cautious manner," Beck said. "So if something is looking a bit weird, then we just won't go."

Some changes are in store for the second Electron flight, which Rocket Lab has christened "Still Testing." The maiden Electron launch was named "It's a Test."

While the May 25 launch carried only an inert payload, the next mission will have satellites on-board, Beck said.

"It's mainly instrumented, but we are flying some payloads up, and we developed our own CubeSat deployer," Beck said.

Rocket Lab's CubeSat canister has completed ground testing, and engineers will evaluate how they work on the next test flight.

"It just gives us a good oppportunity to qualify more components and more systems," Beck said.

Beck said Rocket Lab will reveal which small satellites will fly on the next test flight closer to launch.

No major changes to the Electron rocket's basic designed are planned, but Rocket Lab will introduce several tweaks to components on the launcher.

"We had lots of margins on some areas, so we've reduced some thermal insulation in some areas, and reduced some mass and complexity and optimized some things for production, but there are no major hardware changes," Beck said. "We're not pulling out any subsystems or reworking any subsystems. There are some software tweaks, of course, as there always are, but it's not like we had to go back and redesign anything for the next flight."
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Bell

Цитироватьsilentpom пишет:
да ладно, так микрофалкон с блэкджеком и батарейками
Ну вот с батарейками-то как раз самая интересная тема
Иногда мне кажется что мы черти, которые штурмуют небеса (с) фон Браун

tnt22


tnt22


tnt22

Цитировать Jeff Foust‏ @jeff_foust 8 ч. назад

Inbox: Rocket Lab announces it will carry four cubesats, two each from Planet and Spire, on its next Electron test launch in Oct. #IAC2017

triage

Цитировать http://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=51554
Rocket Lab to fly Planet and Spire satellites on second test flight
Press Release From: Rocket Lab Ltd 
Posted: Monday, September 25, 2017

Rocket Lab today announced it will fly payloads for Planet and Spire aboard its upcoming second test flight, 'Still Testing', from Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand. Rocket Lab's Electron orbital launch vehicle will carry two Earth-imaging Dove satellites for Planet and two Lemur-2 satellites from Spire for weather mapping and ship traffic tracking.
 
The flight is the second of three in Rocket Lab's Electron test program and follows the successful inaugural Electron test flight carried out on May 25, 2017.
 
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Peter Beck, Founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, says carrying a test payload marks a significant milestone for the Electron program, enabling Rocket Lab to gather crucial data and test systems for the deployment stage of a mission. 
 
"We're thrilled with Electron's performance in the first test flight and now we're eager to test the next crucial step – payload deployment. No major changes to the launch vehicle hardware have been required, the third-party error that meant we didn't make orbit has been corrected and we're focusing on the six Electron vehicles in production right now," says Beck.
 
"While we're still very much operating in a test phase and can likely expect a few scrubs during the second test flight attempt, we're incredibly excited about carrying Planet and Spire payloads on Electron. The data these companies gather has an increasingly significant role to play in how we understand our planet and better manage it," says Beck.
 
Mike Safyan, Senior Director of Launch at Planet, says "our companies have long shared an ethos of dreaming big and executing on that vision, so it's only fitting that Planet is among the first payloads to fly on a Rocket Lab Electron. The Electron will be a game changer in a traditionally difficult launch market. We are excited to quite literally be riding the leading edge with Rocket Lab." 
 
Planet's largest-ever network of 190 satellites collects more imagery daily than any other commercial provider, creating a completely new information feed about our world. With this comprehensive and empirical dataset, Planet uses machine learning-driven analytics to create unique insights that deliver crucial market intelligence for businesses, governments, and NGOs.
 
"The ability to iterate quickly and execute on an incredibly high level is core to the success of both Rocket Lab and Spire. 'Still Testing' is a culmination of that work into a single event," said Peter Platzer, CEO of Spire, "and we're proud to be onboard for this inaugural deployment attempt."
 
Spire, the world's first commercial weather satellite constellation, adds two satellites to an existing constellation of Lemur-2 satellites that covers every location on earth over 100 times per day.  The multi-sensor satellites gather global atmospheric measurements for advanced weather warnings and predictions and track global ship traffic for multiple commercial and government applications.
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The Electron vehicle for the 'Still Testing' flight is expected to be trucked to Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand, in October 2017 with a launch window to open in the weeks following once vehicle checks are complete.

che wi

Ну, октябрь не за горами, ждём-с.

tnt22

#196
Del

Salo

"Были когда-то и мы рысаками!!!"

Salo

Цитировать  Rocket Lab‏Подлинная учетная запись @RocketLab  1 ч.1 час назад  
Launch Complex 1 as seen from Range Control. Few weeks away from #Electron being on site for flight two prep #StillTesting
 
"Были когда-то и мы рысаками!!!"

Pirat5

Никакой информации. Наверное хотят тайно ото всех запустить.

Был Still testing,
стал Still waiting...