![]() ![]() Rocket Lab’s manifest is booked for the next two years and has “a nice backlog” of clients waiting to fly. The company expects to launch once per month by the end of this year, twice monthly next year, and is ultimately licensed to launch “every 72 hours,” he says. For Beck, “the most important thing” in rocket design is launch frequency. Rocket Lab will charge a base price of $5.7 million for a dedicated launch to orbit, but if many CubeSats share the ride, the cost for the smallest ones could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.Ĭost isn’t the only factor, though. The Electron’s fuel tanks-its Rutherford engine burns kerosene and liquid oxygen-are 40 percent lighter than traditional metal tanks. The Electron is built of carbon composite, which saves mass, and its engines are made using 3D printers, which saves labor. The company is using several innovative strategies to hold down costs. CubeSats, which have become much more sophisticated in the last decade, will make up a large percentage of the increase, and are one “target market” for the Electron “but not the only one,” according to a Rocket Lab spokesperson. ![]() Today an estimated 200 small satellites are launched per year Swedish space technology company AAC Microtec estimates that by 2023, the number will rise to more than 500. From the company’s launch pad on the east coast of New Zealand, rockets can reach a wide range of altitudes and inclinations to the equator to suit the smallsat customer’s needs. “They have no control over schedule and orbit,” Beck says. Until now, smallsats have had to piggyback on rockets delivering larger satellites for better-paying customers, so they rarely got to call the shots. The two-stage Electron rocket can lift up to 500 pounds to low Earth orbit. Los Angeles-based Rocket Lab is the first private company dedicated to small satellites-which can be anything from tiny, three-pound CubeSats to spacecraft the size of a washing machine. “We’re ready for full commercial operations.” “We’re done testing,” says company CEO Peter Beck. With a flawless launch and the successful release of four small satellites in low Earth orbit, Rocket Lab’s new Electron rocket nailed its final tryout on January 21. This story is a selection from the April/May issue of Air & Space magazine Buy ![]()
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