The 19th flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, named They Go Up So Fast, lifted off on Monday, March 22 at 22:30 UTC. On board the mission were six customer satellites and an internal Photon pathfinder satellite named Pathstone, which will gain flight heritage ahead of future Photon missions to the moon and Venus.
The launch was conducted from Launch Complex 1A (LC-1A) at Rocket Lab’s private launch site on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. In addition to the noteworthy Photon payload, this flight will include the 100th satellite that Rocket Lab has delivered to orbit.
They Go Up So Fast
The external satellites on board They Go Up So Fast include missions for commercial, university, and military customers.
The seventh BlackSky satellite to launch, designated BlackSky Global 9, is a 56 kilogram Earth observation satellite for American small satellite operator BlackSky, Inc. The satellite was built by LEOStella, LLC, and the launch was procured by Spaceflight, Inc.
They Go Up So Fast payload encapsulation is completed ahead of launch – via Rocket Lab
Also on board are a pair of Internet of Things Cubesats built by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems. A 6U satellite, Centauri 3, will be operated by American operator Fleet Space Technologies. The other, a 3U satellite named Myriota 7, will be operated by Australian company Myriota.
The RAAF M2 mission, built by the University of New South Wales for the Royal Australian Air Force, is a technology demonstration mission which will test Earth observation, surveillance, computing, and communications capabilities. The pair of 6U Cubesats will be deployed as a single spacecraft and separate after deployment.
The RAAF M2 mission builds on experience from the M2 Pathfinder mission, which was launched on the Don’t Stop Me Now Electron mission in June 2020.
A 1U Cubesat from Care Weather Technologies, named Hatchling, will carry out a number of technology demonstrations for future spacecraft, including power systems, attitude control, computing and communications systems, and even a micro ion thruster for orbital maneuvers.
The final customer payload on They Go Up So Fast is the Gunsmoke-J 3U Cubesat from Los Alamos National Laboratory, operated by the United States Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC). The technology demonstration satellite is a follow-on the the first Gunsmoke-J satellite, launched on the Northrop Grumman NG-15 Cygnus mission in February 2021 to be deployed after departing the International Space Station.
Pathstone
In addition to the customer payloads on board the flight, Rocket Lab is launching their second Photon spacecraft. After deploying the six customer satellites, the Electron kick stage will transition into satellite mode, and operate as a Photon satellite.
Integration of the briefcase is complete ahead of our next mission! Attaching this box to a Kick Stage instantly turns it into a Photon satellite. pic.twitter.com/RzsPhBJHar
— Rocket Lab (@RocketLab) March 15, 2021
This is accomplished by integrating the “briefcase,” a small avionics assembly, to Electron’s kick stage, which provides the extra capability to operate as a satellite after launch.
Named Pathstone, this Photon satellite aims to accumulate flight experience ahead of future Photon missions, most notably the Capstone mission to the moon for NASA. Launching from LC-2 at Wallops Flight Facility later this year, Capstone will test navigation and operations in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around the moon, the same orbit that the Lunar Gateway station will operate within in support Artemis missions.
Systems on board Pathstone that will be demonstrated ahead of the Capstone and Venus missions include power management, thermal and attitude control, and deep space radio communications systems. Pathstone is the second Photon satellite to fly, following the First Light mission launched on the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Optical mission in August 2020.
The control system on Pathstone is representative of the system which will control Capstone, including reaction wheels manufactured in-house by Rocket Lab.
The Pathstone satellite – via Rocket Lab
Photons, Electrons, and Neutrons
While Rocket Lab started as a small satellite launch provider with Electron, the company has since expanded into the satellite manufacturing business with Photon. These offerings were just the beginning of Rocket Lab’s plans to improve access to space.
In an interview on NASASpaceflight’s weekly news show NSF Live, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said “I feel like we’re about 30% done from where I actually want to see the company go.”
“It used to annoy me that we would be throwing away essentially the kick stage, which is really a satellite, and then deploying other customers’ buses and spacecraft that they spend a tremendous amount of time and money on. So if you can combine all that into one offering then it’s a much more efficient and affordable way of getting stuff up there really quickly.”
On the They Go Up So Fast mission, the kick stage will deploy the first five customer satellites to a 550 kilometer orbit, before maneuvering down to 450 kilometers for the final satellite deployment. This is just the latest creative maneuverability capability that Electron’s kick stage will demonstrate, after a unique maneuver was conducted on the Another One Leaves the Crust mission in January 2021.
“So we were going to a high altitude. It’s at a 1,200 km altitude. And there’s a really nasty radiation anomaly over South America. So we do what’s called the Buchanan Maneuver, named after one of our GNC guys, where we actually fly under that radiation anomaly. And then we come out the other side and use Curie to raise our perigee, raise our orbit and get us where we need to be. And so we completely avoid flying through that horrible piece of radiation.”
Electron launches Another One Leaves the Crust – via Rocket Lab
The maneuverability of this kick stage, which is also the basis of the Photon spacecraft, is planned to enable a mission to Venus in 2023, which is of personal interest to Beck.
“I’m trying to accomplish two goals. One is look, we’re going to send a instrument, and we’re working with an incredible science team, to Venus, and we’ll put a probe into the atmosphere. We get about 280 seconds of time in the atmosphere to make some measurements. At the moment the instrument is looking like a laser-tunable mass spectrometer, initially focused around the phosphine region.”
“The other part of the program and the reason to do it is typically, these interplanetary missions are measured in decades and cost a large amount of money.”
With Rocket Lab’s launch vehicles and spacecraft, Beck hopes that planetary science can become more frequent. “We might not have quite the same exquisite instruments, but we can learn and iterate very, very quickly.”
The Capstone mission to the moon, building off of experience from Pathstone and preceding the Venus mission, is another planned Photon mission to deep space.
Rendering of Capstone in lunar orbit – via NASA
“Now our job for NASA actually is a trans-lunar injection. So we have a customer, in this case NASA’s spacecraft on board.”
“After that TLI burn is complete, we separate off the satellite. And that continues on its own path, and it has its own propulsion system to put it into lunar orbit.”
After deploying Capstone, Rocket Lab is planning to take advantage of an opportunity to fly by the moon. “If you’re going to put yourself in a TLI burn, it’d be a little bit rude to just end it there. So we have an internal stretch mission goal where we’re going to try and do a low altitude lunar flyby and get some nice images along the way.”
The complete NSF Live interview with Peter Beck can be watched on NASASpaceflight’s YouTube channel. Shortly after this interview, Rocket Lab announced Neutron, a reusable, medium lift, crew rated rocket to expand Rocket Lab’s launch service offerings, aiming to support satellite constellation deployment starting in 2024.
(Lead photo via Rocket Lab)