Your Tech Story

rocket lab

Rocket

Pushing the barriers Rocket Lab plans for its first lunar mission next year

Leave a Comment / start-up, Tech News / By

With SpaceX making efforts for better and easier human spaceflight, more and more privately-funded space companies are dreaming bigger. Yesterday, Rocket Lab declared its first mission to the moon in collaboration with NASA. If everything goes well, the launch will take place in 2021.

Rocket Lab is a company most famous for launching small satellites that orbit the Earth. The company believes that the invention of the satellite has changed the perspective of humankind. Today, communication has become much easier, safer, and reliable with the help of these satellites. From weather forecasts to military purposes, satellites have a wide range of applications.

Big Plans

Peter Beck founded Rocket Lab in 2006 and 2009 it became the first private company in the southern hemisphere to reach space. The company has always been passionate about exploring deeper into space. They keep pushing themselves to the edge and every time hits a bigger goal.

Rocket Lab’s next big plan is to land on a unique lunar orbit in collaboration with NASA. This mission of Rocket Lab in 2021 will become a historic event in space history as it aims to land the first woman on the moon by 2024. By now, the company has launched 53 spacecraft in total which mainly targets the lower Earth orbit.

But, the Mission To The Moon will be something exceptional for the company. In this mission, Rocket Lab will use its Electron rocket and Photon Lunar Spacecraft to launch the CAPSTONE CubeSat of NASA. CAPSTONE stands for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment.

Aim of the Mission

The company has been eyeing to land on one of the unique lunar orbits for years. The contract with NASA and the spacecraft CAPSTONE will surely reach new heights. The primary goal of the mission is to examine and verify the stability of a near rectilinear halo orbit around the moon. This is the same orbit that is planned for the Lunar Gateway.

Apart from this, the CAPSTONE concerns about testing a navigation system which will measure its relative position to NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This navigation system will not rely on the ground stations.

More about the CAPSTONE mission

The combination of the Photon spacecraft and the Electron rocket acts as a satellite that is used to transfer various payloads into space. Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft has been used for a few years now. Though the company was using it as a customized satellite for orbiting the lower Earth orbits, it is time to test it for advanced missions.

The Photon spacecraft has undergone some major modifications for the CAPSTONE mission. The size of the propellant tanks has been increased to several folds and a new engine called HyperCurie has been installed. This engine will provide more thrust than the existing Curie engine. Apart from these, the installation of solar panels will take place and some changes to the Photon.

Rocket
Image Source: Rocket Lab

The CAPSTONE is planned to launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2, Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. It is located on Wallops Island, Virginia, USA. The mass of the satellite is 25kg and it will pass 1600km closest to 70000km furthest from the lunar surface. Currently, the team is engaged in building the Electron rocket for the mission. Since the mission is targeting a special lunar orbit; several launches might target the same orbit in the future with better planning.

Beyond the lunar orbit

The Mission To The Moon will be the first step of Rocket Lab for its journey towards deeper space. Once they successfully land of Moon, it will unleash its potential to explore Mars and Venus as well. Rocket Lab mentions that they are waiting to make this mission successful so that they can proceed with other plans to explore the space.

The company also says that these small space probes play a big part in these interplanetary missions. And, they are also looking forward to sending such small spacecraft into deeper space. This is just the first step, and once they proceed to the next mission, many new ideas and strategies will come up. It’s a dream for Rocket Lab to make the journey to space easier.

Photon by Rocket Lab will Save Millions of Dollars of its Customers on Satellite Manufacturing

News, Tech News / By

The small satellite launcher Rocket Lab has unveiled ‘Photon’, a circular satellite platform, at the 35th Space Symposium held in Colorado Springs on Monday, which according to the company will help people reach to the orbit faster and save millions of money.

Rocket Lab is one of the private leaders in the launch and satellite services, and now the company is trying to get its hold on the complete satellite manufacturing solutions for its customers.

rocket lab photon
Image Source: climate.nasa.gov

With Photon, the company has brought a fully customizable satellite that can be modified according to the need of the client, and they do not have to build whole satellite hardware for their Low Earth Orbit missions, like technology demonstration or hosted payload. Photon will help create satellites that will be launched to the orbit on Rocket Lab’s upper stage of the Electron rocket.

In general, even if the satellite companies want to test or launch a satellite, or send delicate sensors or cameras to space, they have to create their own hardware spending millions of dollars, but now with Photon, the companies will get new option to cut the cost as well as reduce the risk.

Peter Beck, the CEO of Rocket Lab, said in a statement, “Launch was the first bit that we needed to solve, but it always seemed crazy to me that the rocket builder did not also build the hardware for a satellite. Photon means satellite companies don’t need to invest millions of dollars in bringing together a team and manufacturing complex space hardware.”

Photon’s design is based on the successfully-flown kick stage, that was used in four out of five Electron launches. Photon has got the GPS support, a flight computer, a 3D-printed Curie engine and more. It has been equipped with propulsion, providing it with the capability of staying in the orbit for five years by adjusting with outer conditions like the altitude. The satellite can weigh up to 374 pounds (170 kilograms).

According to Beck, Photon is a complete satellite solution, that will help the customers to drop the coordination phase between different companies during the manufacturing of satellite, and Rocket Lab will be responsible for most of the work.

Peter Beck : The Rocket Man from New Zealand

start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

There has always been a debate between people about the need of education to get successful in life. Some are who really stress over completing the education to achieve the goals, and some are who can’t wait to get to their dreams for so long so that they just skip the higher education. But in the success story of this Kiwi startup entrepreneur, Peter Beck, the case was a bit different.

Beck, who was a sharp student, had to quit education after high school, as there was no such curricular course that could lead him to his targets. This engineer from New Zealand is just not one of the best visionary rocket scientists but also a skilled businessman, who knows how to sell his idea to the right people.

Early Life

Beck was born and brought up in Invercargill, New Zealand, to a gemologist father and a teacher mother. As a teen, he became interested in machines and rockets, as his family was also in love with machines. While growing up, he decided that he wants to create rockets and satellite.

peter beck
Image Source: spaceflightnow.com

According to one of his interviews, one day the career counsellor from his high school administration called his parents up and told them that the school did not have any courses that could fit to help Beck achieve his dreams, rather his goals were “absurdly unachievable”.

Career

Since it was clear that there was no relevant educational course for Beck in school, just after finishing high school, Beck moved to East Tamaki, New Zealand, where he joined Fisher & Paykel for an apprenticeship, at the age of 17. He not only became familiar with the top of the line machinery and materials there but also kept on experimenting with his mini rockets at the workshops.

In 2001, he started working at the Industrial Research (now Callaghan Innovation). This was the place where he met one of the future investors of Rocket Lab, Stephen Tindall.

Founding Rocket Lab

His passion for rockets led him to work hard and found his start-up company Rocket Lab, in 2006. As the name suggests, the company was dedicated to building rockets and satellites. The company received its seed funding from New Zealander internet entrepreneur, Mark Rocket. Beck became the CEO and the CTO of the company and appointed Mark Rocket as its co-director.

It was in 2009 when Beck successfully launched the company’s first suborbital sounding rocket, named ?tea, becoming the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space.

In 2010, Rocket Lab received a contract from the U.S. government, under which, the company had to study a low-cost space launcher to place CubeSats into orbit. The contract was under NASA, meaning that the Rocket Lab could use all its resources as per the requirement.

In 2013, Beck entered the Silicon Valley, to raise funding for Rocket Lab’s next big project, a two-stage launch vehicle, the Electron. Beck had a time of three weeks, and he knew to whom pitch for the investment. Rather than going to every other venture capitalist, he focussed on the ones who had already invested in such projects and had known about it. Finally, he managed to secure A-round funding from Khosla Ventures, the venture capitalists, who have already invested in a few so projects.

The first commercial launch of Electron occurred on 11 November 2018, from Mahia Peninsula. It carried satellites for Spire Global, GeoOptics, a CubeSat built by high school students, and a prototype of a drag sail to the orbit.

The company has received funds worth $25m from the New Zealand government over the past few years. But still, the company has got more investments from the Silicon Valley companies including Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Data Collective, Promus Ventures, Lockheed Martin and Stephen Tindall’s K1W1, making it legally a U.S. company.

Personal Life

Beck is married and has two children. His wife is also an engineer.

Royal Aeronautical Society, awarded Beck the Meritorious Medal for service of an exceptional nature to New Zealand aviation and a Cooper Medal. In 2014, he was awarded the Innovation in Design and Engineering Award at the NZ Innovators Awards. In 2016, he was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year.