Friday, December 6, 2019

Rocket Lab Puts Seven More Satellites Into Space

Huntington Beach-based Rocket Lab successfully put seven more satellites into space early Friday morning from its launch site in New Zealand, in the company's tenth launch. Rocket Lab launched another of its Electron rockets into space at 6:18am PST, in a mission it called "Running Out of Fingers". Rocket Lab said the Electron in this launch was upgraded with equipment designed to help it along the path to full recovery of its rockets next year Rocket Lab has said it plans to retrieve the Electron not by landing the rocket--like SpaceX--but instead to pluck the falling Electron out of the sky with a helicopter. Rocket Lab's rocket launches cost around $5M, and have the ability to put about 500 lbs of payload into orbit--which limit the rocket for small satellite/Cubesat launches.

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