Successful mission first of ‘busiest year ever’ for Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket launches from its Māhia spaceport yesterday. It is the first mission of a huge year for the company. Picture supplied by Rocket Lab

The first launch of more than 20 planned for this year lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Māhia spaceport yesterday.

The space-junk focused mission for global data and analytics company Spire Global and space sustainability, safety and security company  NorthStar Earth & Space lifted off at 7.34pm.

Named  Four Of A Kind, it successfully deployed four Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites to a 530km circular Earth orbit.

The satellites, built and operated by Spire, will monitor near-Earth objects from space to provide timely and precise information for space object detection, tracking, orbit determination, collision avoidance, navigation and proximity alerts.

The mission also resulted in the successful return of the rocket’s first stage after launch as part of Rocket Lab’s plan to evolve Electron rocket into a reusable rocket.

After launch and stage separation, Electron’s booster made its way back to Earth under a parachute and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean 17 minutes post lift-off.

It was recovered by ship.

“The success of today’s mission to deliver Spire & NorthStar to orbit, and the completion of our secondary mission to return Electron to Earth after launch, has been a fantastic start of what is set to be Rocket Lab’s busiest year ever,” Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Peter Beck said  in a statement.

“We have more missions booked in 2024 than we’ve ever scheduled before and it is a real privilege to continue to deliver small launch reliability for our satellite customers on advanced missions like these and for all the missions to come in 2024.”