Rocket Lab successfully launches Nasa cyclone-monitoring satellites, following rival’s blunder

A Rocket Lab Electron is due to take off from Mahia at 1pm, carrying two cyclone-monitoring satellites for Nasa's Tropics mission. Photo / Supplied

After weather delays, Rocket Lab successfully launched “Rocket Like a Hurricane” from Mahia, shortly after 1pm today.

It was the first of two launches for Nasa’s “Tropics” mission, which is creating a constellation of satellites to provide hourly data on cyclones and hurricanes.

Liftoff! Two TROPICS shoebox-sized satellites are on their way to join the fleet of @NASAEarth missions studying our home planet. Together, TROPICS will have the potential to gather near-hourly data on the formation and development of tropical cyclones. pic.twitter.com/wN4du9afZS

— NASA (@NASA) May 8, 2023

Rocket Lab took over the contract for two Tropics launches, each carrying two cyclone-monitoring satellites, in November last year. Nasa dropped previous contract holder, Astra, after it lost two Tropics satellites in June last year due to an ignition failure with the upper stage of its Rocket 3.3 launch vehicle. The satellites failed to reach orbit, and burned up as the upper stage re-entered the atmosphere.

Astra has now seen eight of its 10 launches end in failure, while Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit last month filed for bankruptcy protection in the US last month, and laid off 85 per cent of its staff, after a series of test launch failures.

Rocket Lab remains the only serious challenger to Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the private launch market.

Neither Rocket Lab nor Nasa has put a value on the Tropics contract.

But Space News says Federal procurement filings reveal it as a US$13.99 million contract. (Rocket Lab won’t move up into the middle-weight division until the launch of its larger Neutron rocket in 2024. CFO Adam Spice recently said Rocket Lab will charge US$50-US$55m for a Neutron launch, undercutting the US$67m that SpaceX bills for a Falcon 9 flight).

Once the first Tropics launch takes place, the pressure will be on.

Today is the first of two Rocket Lab flights for Tropics. Each will carry two of Nasa’s cyclone-monitoring satellites. The second two satellites will need to be deployed to an operational orbit within 60 days of the first.

The second launch will also take place from Mahia. Rocket Lab is aiming for “within a couple of weeks” of the first.

There are technical reasons, but there’s also a pressing weather issue.

“With the 2023 hurricane season fast approaching, time is of the essence for these missions,” Rocket Lab Peter Beck said.

The official hurricane season for the Atlantic basin, which includes Florida and other southern US states, is from June 1 to November 30.

The Tropics constellation (Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats) will monitor the formation and evolution of tropical cyclones, including hurricanes, and will provide rapidly updating observations of storm intensity, Nasa says.

This data will help scientists better understand the processes that affect these high-impact storms, ultimately leading to improved modelling and prediction.

Earlier this year, Rocket Lab staged its first launch from its new Launch Complex 2, which sits within Nasa’s Wallops Island facility in Virginia.

The first Tropics launch was also slated for Virginia but was moved to Mahia after a possible timing conflict with another mission emerged.

Rocket Lab is due to release its first-quarter earnings after the bell on Tuesday (Wednesday morning NZT).

The Kiwi-American firm’s shares continue to drift in space. The stock, which listed at US$10.00 in August 2021 then shot to US$18.69 in September that year, closed at US$3.85 on Friday.

For the full-year 2022, Rocket Lab made a net loss widen from the year-ago US$117.3m to US$135.9m as revenue increased 239 per cent over the Covid-stunted 2021 to US$211m.

Its backlog of orders for launches and space systems more than doubled from the year-ago US$241 million to US$503m.

The firm still has most of the proceeds from its August 2021 Nasdaq listing in the bank. It finished 2022 with US$484.3m in cash and equivalents from the year-ago $691m.