Rocket Labs has now had 14 launches from Mahia peninsula, (12 successful, 2 unsuccessful). Their main business is launching stacks of small cube satellites, as well as some larger satellites, into polar and sun-synchronous orbits, using their Electron rocket.

Rocket Labs has announced a new phase of their operations: offering the final kick stage as a project platform. Typically, the Electron rocket has two lower stages, which are recoverable, and one expendable “kick” stage called Curie. They will now be offering to kit out Curie with photovoltaics, comms, navigation, gyroscopes etc, so that it can be a basic platform for customer’s experiments. To me this seems a reasonable idea: given that the stage is going to be launched anyway, the additional cost of kitting it out would be competitive with specialised launches.

They are calling this platform the Photon Satellite Bus. The first launch of such a bus took place earlier this week. The primary launch purpose was to put a radar imaging satellite into low earth orbit for Capella Space, and the use of the bus was a test.

Quoth Rocket Labs founder Peter Beck:

“Launching the first Photon mission marks a major turning point for space users – it’s now easier to launch and operate a space mission than it has ever been. When our customers choose a launch-plus-spacecraft mission with Electron and Photon, they immediately eliminate the complexity, risk, and delays associated with having to build their own satellite hardware and procure a separate launch.”

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/09/rocket-lab-debuts-photon/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC8RxgL9tK4 Announcement on Youtube

Rocket Labs is partnering with NASA for a Lunar mission next year, called Capstone, that will use a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This will use their upgraded “Hypercurie” final stage.

dv said:

Rocket Labs has now had 14 launches from Mahia peninsula, (12 successful, 2 unsuccessful). Their main business is launching stacks of small cube satellites, as well as some larger satellites, into polar and sun-synchronous orbits, using their Electron rocket.

Rocket Labs has announced a new phase of their operations: offering the final kick stage as a project platform. Typically, the Electron rocket has two lower stages, which are recoverable, and one expendable “kick” stage called Curie. They will now be offering to kit out Curie with photovoltaics, comms, navigation, gyroscopes etc, so that it can be a basic platform for customer’s experiments. To me this seems a reasonable idea: given that the stage is going to be launched anyway, the additional cost of kitting it out would be competitive with specialised launches.

They are calling this platform the Photon Satellite Bus. The first launch of such a bus took place earlier this week. The primary launch purpose was to put a radar imaging satellite into low earth orbit for Capella Space, and the use of the bus was a test.

Quoth Rocket Labs founder Peter Beck:

“Launching the first Photon mission marks a major turning point for space users – it’s now easier to launch and operate a space mission than it has ever been. When our customers choose a launch-plus-spacecraft mission with Electron and Photon, they immediately eliminate the complexity, risk, and delays associated with having to build their own satellite hardware and procure a separate launch.”

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/09/rocket-lab-debuts-photon/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC8RxgL9tK4 Announcement on Youtube

Rocket Labs is partnering with NASA for a Lunar mission next year, called Capstone, that will use a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This will use their upgraded “Hypercurie” final stage.

> Rocket Labs has now had 14 launches from Mahia peninsula.

Wow.

> Rocket Labs is partnering with NASA for a Lunar mission next year, called Capstone, that will use a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This will use their upgraded “Hypercurie” final stage.

I like it, but how can a halo orbit be rectilinear?

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

Rocket Labs has now had 14 launches from Mahia peninsula, (12 successful, 2 unsuccessful). Their main business is launching stacks of small cube satellites, as well as some larger satellites, into polar and sun-synchronous orbits, using their Electron rocket.

Rocket Labs has announced a new phase of their operations: offering the final kick stage as a project platform. Typically, the Electron rocket has two lower stages, which are recoverable, and one expendable “kick” stage called Curie. They will now be offering to kit out Curie with photovoltaics, comms, navigation, gyroscopes etc, so that it can be a basic platform for customer’s experiments. To me this seems a reasonable idea: given that the stage is going to be launched anyway, the additional cost of kitting it out would be competitive with specialised launches.

They are calling this platform the Photon Satellite Bus. The first launch of such a bus took place earlier this week. The primary launch purpose was to put a radar imaging satellite into low earth orbit for Capella Space, and the use of the bus was a test.

Quoth Rocket Labs founder Peter Beck:

“Launching the first Photon mission marks a major turning point for space users – it’s now easier to launch and operate a space mission than it has ever been. When our customers choose a launch-plus-spacecraft mission with Electron and Photon, they immediately eliminate the complexity, risk, and delays associated with having to build their own satellite hardware and procure a separate launch.”

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2020/09/rocket-lab-debuts-photon/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC8RxgL9tK4 Announcement on Youtube

Rocket Labs is partnering with NASA for a Lunar mission next year, called Capstone, that will use a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This will use their upgraded “Hypercurie” final stage.

> Rocket Labs has now had 14 launches from Mahia peninsula.

Wow.

> Rocket Labs is partnering with NASA for a Lunar mission next year, called Capstone, that will use a near-rectilinear halo orbit. This will use their upgraded “Hypercurie” final stage.

I like it, but how can a halo orbit be rectilinear?

Well it is not quite but NHROs are closest to rectilinear

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X5O77OV9_ek

TATE is pretty unhelpful in explaining what a rectilinear orbit is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-rectilinear_halo_orbit

The Rev Dodgson said:

TATE is pretty unhelpful in explaining what a rectilinear orbit is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-rectilinear_halo_orbit

I blame DV.

Anyone heard of any achievements by our own Australian Space Agency?

I imagine that there’s been a lot of office decorating, and the travel budget has probably been hammered, but any news about space-related projects?

I looked at it’s webpages/

‘Upcoming events’ page shows…nothing is upcoming.

ABC News”

‘Police make several arrests in Melbourne, where hundreds of people are protesting against the city’s stage 4 restrictions.’

To put it another way:

‘Over 4.8 million Melburnians see no reason to join in protests against the city’s stage 4 restrictions.’

Sorry, wrong thread.

Witty Rejoinder said:

The Rev Dodgson said:

TATE is pretty unhelpful in explaining what a rectilinear orbit is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-rectilinear_halo_orbit

I blame DV.

Fair.

I mean there are a stack of different kinds of halo orbits about the Lagrange points. Some of them are mostly in the plane of the earth-moon orbit.

These NRHOs are elongated, and oriented nearly perpendicular to the earth-moon orbital plane.

The New Zealand Space Agency is partnering with a non-profit organisation called the Environmental Defense Fund on an environmental science satellite called MethaneSAT. The launch location and launch vehicle have not been decided, but launch is expected in 2022. The mission control facility will be in New Zealand, and NZ will contribute to the science hardware.

With regard to the previously mentioned CAPSTONE lunar cubesat mission, the price Rocket Labs charged NASA to build and launch the satellite was only 9.9 million USD. That’s pretty damn cheap.

dv said:

With regard to the previously mentioned CAPSTONE lunar cubesat mission, the price Rocket Labs charged NASA to build and launch the satellite was only 9.9 million USD. That’s pretty damn cheap.

Sort of.

A cubesat can be small enough to build for a few thousand dollars.
A launch is typically 2 million, it can be less but if so then it wouldn’t be reliable.
That leaves earth orbit to moon. Perhaps another 2 million.
For space flights, insurance is hefty.

So 9.9 million overall isn’t all that cheap.

But then, when it comes to cost, Shuttle launches and Japanese launches used to cost a lot more than that. A launch from India would cost less, but you’d be running a high risk of failure.

mollwollfumble said:

dv said:

With regard to the previously mentioned CAPSTONE lunar cubesat mission, the price Rocket Labs charged NASA to build and launch the satellite was only 9.9 million USD. That’s pretty damn cheap.

Sort of.

A cubesat can be small enough to build for a few thousand dollars.
A launch is typically 2 million, it can be less but if so then it wouldn’t be reliable.
That leaves earth orbit to moon. Perhaps another 2 million.
For space flights, insurance is hefty.

So 9.9 million overall isn’t all that cheap.

Nah for real though this is by far the cheapest lunar mission ever and with great love I say you’re making stuff up. The cheap-as-chips Indian mission, which was the previous cheapest, cost over $50 million.

Some more details on The Rocket Lab website on the Photon configuration for interplanetary missions, which is that the payload for inner solar system transfers is 40kg and upwards. This might not seem much, but considering their platform already takes care of power supply, comms, propulsion, attitude control, computing, you could get good value for your 40kg of science hardware.

RL are a bit coy about what propellent is used: it is described as a Viscous Liquid Monopropellant, is thixotropic. They say it can be shut of and restarted an arbitrary number of times.