Because long holiday weekends can make it hard to find stories.
Rocket Lab launches twice in two days
Rocket Lab is approaching the SpaceX cadence, not being three times a week, but that could well be because they don't have as many launch pad options.
Rocket Lab's "Symphony in the Stars" mission lifted off on Saturday, June 28, from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The mission was the second of two launches from the same launch site in less than 48 hours, a new record for turnaround time, the company said. It's a sign of a maturing company that Rocket Lab can turn between launches so quickly.
The ‘Symphony In The Stars’ mission lifted-off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand on June 28th (7:08 p.m./07:08 UTC) to deploy a single spacecraft to a 650km circular Earth orbit. The mission was the first of two dedicated launches for the new customer on Electron booked less than four months ago, with a second mission scheduled before the end of 2025.
Rocket Lab has now completed four launches in June for commercial satellite constellation operators, underscoring Electron's consistent performance and rapid deployment capabilities as the world’s leading small launcher: the “Full Stream Ahead” mission on June 3rd; “The Mountain God Guards” mission on June 11th; “Get The Hawk Outta Here” launched on June 26th UTC, and today’s “Symphony In The Stars” mission.
Rocket Lab Founder and CEO, Sir Peter Beck, went a little far in his remarks (IMO) about the successful missions, saying, “Electron has demonstrated once again that it is the gold standard for responsive and reliable space access for small satellites. The future of space is built on proven performance, and Electron continues to deliver against a stacked launch manifest this year. Congratulations to the team on achieving its fastest launch turnaround yet between two missions from Launch Complex 1. This launch was also a quick-turn mission to meet our customer’s mission requirements, and we’re looking forward to doing it again later this year.”
‘Symphony In The Stars’ was Rocket Lab’s tenth Electron mission of 2025. They may well be the gold standard in the niche market of small satellites in orbits that the bigger rockets don't serve in ridesharing missions, but 10 missions in half the year is a small market.
ArianeGroup's Themis reusable demonstrator rocket arrives in Sweden
At the end of 2024, it was news that Ariane was looking to start testing the conceptual design of the Themis rocket this year - roughly three years after the first test dates they talked about which were in 2022. Themis is patterned after the Falcon 9. The prototype arrived in Sweden on Wednesday, July 2nd.
The initial phase of the test campaign will include wet-dress rehearsals and hot-fire tests, to be followed by a "hop test" that will occur no earlier than the end of this year.
Hopping higher and higher ... Based on experience from these initial tests, the program aims to fly the Themis demonstrator on higher and progressively more advanced tests, not dissimilar to what SpaceX did with its Grasshopper vehicle a little more than a decade ago in Texas. Eventually, Europe aims to use lessons learned from Themis to develop a reusable rocket similar to the Falcon 9 vehicle.
Europe’s first reusable rocket main stage demonstrator, Themis, is being
transported to its launch pad at Esrange Space Centre, Sweden. Credit:
ESA/ArianeGroup
Pretty much all the big names have been talking about developing reusable
rockets because Reusability Changes Everything. The ESA is
lagging behind China.
At the rate Blue Origin is proceeding, even the friggin Euroweenies are going to have reusable launchers before New Glen comes on line.
ReplyDeleteAnd good for Rocket Labs.