Small rocket builder Rocket Lab is gearing up for a mission that seems like something out of a big-budget action movie: catching a falling four-storey-tall rocket booster using a helicopter.
The company — which was founded in New Zealand but now has headquarters in the United States — is trying to slash the cost of spaceflight by reusing its rockets, a trend pioneered by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk's SpaceX.
Rocket Lab aims to use a helicopter with two pilots to pluck an 11.9-metre booster stage out of the air using a combination of ropes, parachutes and a heat shield.
"I'm pretty confident that if the helicopter pilots can see it, they'll catch it," Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck said.
"If we don't get it this time, we'll learn a bunch and we'll get it the next time, so I'm not super worried."
Hinging on good weather, the capture test is due to take place off the coast of Mahia, New Zealand, the location of Rocket Lab's primary launch site, on Saturday morning.
Rocket Lab has launched roughly two dozen rockets into orbit for government and commercial customers, three of which ended in mission failures.
Recovering rocket boosters via parachutes and helicopters instead of using its engines to land vertically means the rocket does not need to save extra — and heavy — fuel for a "propulsive" landing like that performed by SpaceX's Falcon, Mr Beck said.
And landing rockets vertically is trickier for smaller, lighter rockets, according to engineers.
Rocket Lab's helicopter capture test is set to take place after the company's Electron rocket launches 34 small satellites in a mission that Rocket Lab has named There and Back Again.
After the first stage booster launches to space and releases its satellite-topped second stage toward orbit, it is designed to fall back to Earth at eight times the speed of sound, re-entering the atmosphere along a narrow path to rendezvous with the helicopter, which is equipped with tracking computers.
The booster stage is designed to deploy a series of parachutes to slow its descent.
If all goes well, pilots will steer the helicopter, dangling a long cable underneath, toward the parachuting booster, hook onto it and carry it back to land.
A video of a test showed a dummy rocket stage drifting down beneath a parachute, with a smaller, secondary chute stretching the capture line to the side of the rocket, making it easier for the helicopter's vertically hanging hook line to catch on.
The helicopter remains well above the rocket.
"Every piece we've successfully tested individually," Mr Beck said.
"Now it's just an orchestra to conduct.
"If we can use a rocket twice, then we've just doubled our production."
Reuters
