On November 16th at 02:20 UTC, Rocket Lab made its sixteenth Electron launch from the Mahia Peninsula on the North Island in New Zealand.
This launch carried 30 small payloads into orbit, including 24 0.25-unit microsatellites for Swarm Communications.
Also on board was a pair of CubeSats called Dragracer, designed to demonstrate a new deorbit tether technology. According to the manufacturer TriSept, the baseline spacecraft will decay in 6 to 9 years, and the spacecraft with the tether will decay in 45 days.
The next spacecraft on the mission was APSS-1, a student-built spacecraft developed to determine whether ionospheric activity is related to earthquakes.
Another pair of CubeSats, BRO-2 and BRO-3, for French company Unseenlabs will use radio emissions to track ship movements.
Lastly on the mission was a 150-mm tall mass simulator in the shape of Gnome Chompski from the video game Half-Life 2. The mass simulator was made using a new metal 3D printing method by Weta Workshop, an award-winning design studio. This mass simulator has special significance: Valve Corporation CEO Gabe Newell, the creator of Half-Life 2, announced that he would be donating $1 for every viewer watching Rocket Lab’s official broadcast to Starship Children’s Hospital in New Zealand. In the end, nearly NZ$300k was raised for the hospital.
As the launch progressed, several popups in the style of Steam achievements appeared on the broadcast, denoting various events like liftoff and stage separation.
The Return to Sender patch is in the shape of a postage stamp, as a nod to the name of the mission. In the top left corner is the number 16, representing the sixteenth Electron launch. The patch features the Electron first stage descending under a red and white parachute into the sea. In the background, there are white clouds, a clear blue sky, and the waves of a gently rolling ocean.
In addition to a successful launch, Rocket Lab successfully recovered the first stage using a parachute system. This is the first time they have done this, having gathered data on previous missions with no recovery attempt. This image was posted by Rocket Labs CEO Peter Beck on his Twitter after the launch and shows the Electron first stage floating in the water with the parachute around it. During a press conference later, Beck said that the booster “took quite the beating” from the five-meter swells in the ocean. Further analysis of the full condition of the booster will be performed and released later.
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