A Rocket Lab Electron launcher launched today at 1:27 p.m. EDT (1727 GMT, 6:27 a.m. Nov. 5 local New Zealand time), launching a mission the company has dubbed “Catch Me If You Can.” The mission was successful. Electron deployed the satellite, known as MATS (“Mesospheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy”), an hour after liftoff as planned. But Rocket Lab couldn’t find the catch mentioned in the flight’s name.
A Rocket Lab Electron rocket launches the MATS satellite for the Swedish National Space Agency on November 4, 2022. (Image credit: Rocket Lab) The California-based company aimed to grab the Electron’s first stage out of the sky in a helicopter about 19 minutes after liftoff, to prevent the vehicle from plunging into corrosive seawater and facilitate its delivery back to terra firma for analysis and eventual reuse. The 59-foot (18-meter) Electron, a small-satellite launcher with 32 missions to date, is currently a completely expendable vehicle. Recovering and reusing the first stage will allow Rocket Lab to increase its flight rate and reduce costs, company officials said. The Electron is too small to perform vertical powered landings, as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters do. it does not have enough fuel after launch for such maneuvers. So Rocket Lab decided to go with the helicopter, which holds the Electron’s parachute line with a hook as the booster descends. Rocket Lab has made some progress toward the goal of reusability. For example, it has already carried out a helicopter recovery, in a mission in May this year called “There And Back Again”. (Rocket Lab likes to give its flights playful names, as you may have noticed.) During that May mission, the helicopter — a Sikorsky S-92 — successfully grabbed the Electron’s first stage but accidentally dropped it in the booze shortly afterward. Rocket Lab fished the rocket out of the sea and brought it back to shore by boat. The company analyzed the flying booster, then refurbished and tested one of the nine Rutherford engines, with promising results. “The refurbished engine passed all of the same rigorous acceptance tests that we perform on every launch engine, including 200 seconds of engine firing and multiple restarts,” company representatives wrote in the Catch Me If You Can press kit, which can be found here ( opens in a new tab). Tests showed the engine produced full thrust and “performed to the same standard as a newly built Rutherford engine,” they added. However, Rocket Lab would prefer to keep its boosters out of the water. So he planned to send the Sikorsky after the drop of the electron booster in “Catch Me If You Can” today — but things didn’t work out. “We are not bringing Electron home dry on this mission due to some loss of telemetry from the rocket’s first stage during re-entry,” Rocket Lab communications manager Murielle Baker said during a webcast of today’s launch. “As standard safety procedure, we pull the helicopter out of the recovery zone if that happens, so we wouldn’t be able to attempt a catch today,” he added. “But that’s what test programs are all about: push hardware and systems to their limits and iterate.” The Electron made a soft fall in the Pacific Ocean, and Rocket Lab plans to retrieve it by boat, Baker said. The failure to capture the helicopter should not, of course, color the entire mission. It was a sidelight, and “Catch Me If You Can” achieved its primary objective, delivering the MATS spacecraft to its designated orbit. MATS “is the basis for SNSA’s science mission to investigate atmospheric waves and better understand how Earth’s upper atmosphere interacts with wind and weather patterns closer to the ground,” Rocket Lab wrote in its press kit of the mission. Originally MATS was to be launched on top of a Russian rocket, but SNSA and the satellite’s prime contractor, OHB Sweden AB, scrapped that deal (opens in new tab) after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and rebooked a Electron. Editor’s note: This story was updated at 3:15 p.m. EDT on Nov. 4 with news of a successful satellite launch and deployment and the lack of a helicopter booster capture. Mike Wall is the author of “Out there (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018, illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or enabled Facebook (opens in a new tab).
