| (March 27, 2021, 6:55 p.m.) -- Long Beach-HQ'd Rocket Lab (3881 McGowen St in ELB's Douglas Park) has successfully launched its 19th mission orbiting six spacecraft for several government and commercial customers AND deployed Rocket Lab’s latest in-house manufactured Photon spacecraft (ahead of the upcoming CAPSTONE mission to the Moon for NASA).AND the firm announced a contract to launch multiple missions to low Earth orbit for BlackSky, which provides real-time geospatial intelligence and global monitoring services.
In a release, Rocket Lab says the March 23 lift off of its Electron rocket from its Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula (March 22, 2021 22:30 UTC) successfully deployed an Earth-observation satellite for BlackSky Global through Spaceflight Inc; two Internet of Things (IoT) nanosatellites for Australian commercial operators Fleet Space and Myriota. A test satellite built by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Canberra Space in collaboration with the Royal Australian Air Force; a weather monitoring CubeSat for Care Weather Technologies; and a technology demonstrator for the U.S. Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command (SMDC). Rocket Lab has now put 104 satellites into orbit. . Following this payload, the rocket's Kick Stage is being reconfigured to Photon, Rocket Lab’s in-house built spacecraft, says the company release. "Photon Pathstone is equipped with new power management, thermal control, and attitude control subsystems that will be utilized for the CAPSTONE mission to the Moon for NASA later this year. Photon Pathstone is also testing on orbit new deep-space radio capability, an upgraded RCS (reaction control system), and sun sensors and star trackers." Less than 72 hours later, Rocket Lab announced a multi-launch agreement with launch services provider Spaceflight Inc., that will "manage the integration and launch services for BlackSky, includes the launch of nine BlackSky satellites across five Electron missions this year," a Rocket Lab release said. . |
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