Rocket Lab se vrača v službo z "brezhibnim" lansiranjem ameriške vojske

Resuming launches after a mission failure two months ago, Rocket Lab successfully placed a small U.S. military research and development satellite into orbit Thursday following a fiery liftoff from New Zealand on a flight that was originally supposed to launch from the company’s new pad in Virginia.

The 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket ignited its nine kerosene-fueled Rutherford engines and climbed away from Launch Complex 1 on the North Island of New Zealand at 2 a.m. EDT (0600 GMT) Thursday.

Liftoff from Rocket Lab’s privately-owned launch base on Mahia Peninsula occurred at 6 p.m. local time, just after sunset.

Heading east from Mahia, the rocket’s first stage burned its nine engines for about two-and-a-half minutes, followed by a six-minute firing of the second stage engine to reach a preliminary parking orbit.

A kick stage deployed from the the Electron rocket’s second stage to begin a coast across the Pacific Ocean, Central America, and the Caribbean Sea before igniting its Curie engine reach a circular orbit about 372 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth at an inclination of 37 degrees to the equator.

Rocket Lab, a California-based company founded in New Zealand, confirmed a good deployment of the U.S. military’s small experimental Monolith spacecraft about 52 minutes after liftoff.

“Payload deployed, flawless launch and mission by the team!” tweeted Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO.

The mission was the 21st flight of a Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle since 2017, and the eighth to carry a payload for a U.S. military or intelligence agency customer.

It was also the first Rocket Lab mission since May 15, when an Electron rocket failed before reaching orbit with two commercial BlackSky Earth-imaging satellites.

Notranja preiskava Rocket Laba, pod nadzorom Zvezne uprave za letalstvo, je ugotovila, da je napako povzročila težava s sistemom vžiga na motorju druge stopnje lanserja Electron.

"To je povzročilo popačenje signalov v motornem računalniku, zaradi česar je krmiljenje vektorja potiska Rutherfordovega motorja (TVC) odstopalo od nominalnih parametrov in povzročilo, da je motorni računalnik ukazal ničelno hitrost črpalke in zaustavil motor," je dejal Rocket Lab v izjavi. v začetku tega meseca.

Videoposnetek v živo iz rakete, ki je bil 15. maja predvajan, je pokazal, da se Rutherfordov motor druge stopnje na kerozin vžge in takoj začne padati približno tri minute po letu. Motor se je predčasno ugasnil po nekajsekundnem streljanju, precej manj od načrtovanega šestminutnega gorenja.

Raketa in njena dva tovora BlackSky sta padla v Tihi ocean navzdol od izstrelišča na Novi Zelandiji.

Rocket Lab je dejal, da je težava z vžigalnikom "posledica prej nezaznavnega načina okvare v sistemu za vžig, ki se pojavi pod edinstvenim nizom okoljskih pritiskov in pogojev."

The company said engineers found no evidence of the problem during pre-flight testing, which included more than 400 seconds of burn time for the same engine. But Rocket Lab said it was able to replicate the issue after the flight, and teams “implemented redundancies in the ignition system to prevent any future reoccurrence, including modifications to the igniter’s design and manufacture.”

Misija 15. maja je bila tretjič, da raketa Electron ni uspela doseči orbite v 20 poskusih od leta 2017.

Engineers traced the cause of an Electron second stage failure in July 2020 to a faulty electrical connector, which detached in flight and led to an early engine shutdown, dooming seven small commercial satellites.

Rocket Lab said it implemented improved testing to better screen for bad connectors, and the company successfully launched its next Electron mission less than two months later.

Rocket Lab je pred neuspešno izstrelitvijo 15. maja zbral šest zaporednih uspešnih misij Electron. Prvi poskus orbitalne izstrelitve leta 2017 ni uspel doseči orbite zaradi okvare zemeljskega sistema, zaradi katere so varnostne ekipe poslale raketi ukaz za prekinitev leta.

The small launch company says it is ready to resume a busy flight cadence through the rest of the year. Rocket Lab is close to beginning launches from two new pads — one in Virginia and another adjacent to its existing launch complex in New Zealand — to accommodate a more rapid flight rate.

Thursday’s mission, designated STP-27RM, was originally supposed to launch from Rocket Lab’s new pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, located at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. But delays in NASA’s certification of the Electron rocket’s new autonomous flight safety system have kept Rocket Lab from beginning service from the Virginia launch base.

Junija so uradniki pri Wallopsu povedali, da upajo, da bodo dokončali certificiranje novega avtonomnega varnostnega sistema letenja do konca leta, kar bo omogočilo prvo izstrelitev Rocket Lab z ameriškega ozemlja. Z izstrelitvijo vojaške misije Monolith, ki je bila prestavljena iz Virginije na Novo Zelandijo, bo prvi polet Rocket Laba iz Launch Complexa 2 v Wallopsu verjetno izstrelil tovor NASA CAPSTONE CubeSat na Luno.

Po navedbah NASA in Rocket Lab je misija CAPSTONE predvidena za izstrelitev konec tega leta.

Vesoljski testni program, ki pomaga pri upravljanju razvoja vojaških eksperimentalnih satelitov, je zagotovil izstrelitev satelita Monolith s programom za izstrelitev raketnih sistemov, ki je del Centra za vesoljske in raketne sisteme vesoljskih sil.

Drugi partnerji na misiji vključujejo Enoto za obrambne inovacije in Rapid Agile Launch Initiative, program, ki rezervira prevoze v orbito za majhne vojaške satelite na nastajajočih komercialnih malih satelitskih lansirnikih.

The Monolith satellite, built by the non-profit Space Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University, will demonstrate the use of a deployable sensor that is relatively large in mass compared to the mass of the spacecraft itself, according to the Space and Missile Systems Center.

Namestitev senzorja bo spremenila dinamične lastnosti satelita in preizkusila sposobnost vesoljskega plovila, da ohrani stabilen nadzor položaja, so povedali vojaški uradniki.

When the military announced the Monolith mission in 2019, officials said the satellite’s sensor package is aimed at space weather monitoring.

Data from the Monolith mission will help engineers design future small satellites to host deployable sensors, such as weather monitoring instruments. The Space Force said that will help reduce the cost, complexity, and development timelines of future missions.

"Satelit bo zagotovil tudi platformo za testiranje prihodnjih zmogljivosti zaščite vesolja," so sporočili iz vesoljskih sil.

Rocket Lab did not attempt to recover the Electron rocket’s first stage booster on Thursday’s mission. The company has retrieved two Electron boosters from the Pacific Ocean as engineers move toward reusing the rocket’s first stage, an innovation Rocket Lab says will allow for a faster launch rate and lower costs.

Raketa Electron podjetja Rocket Lab je dimenzionirana za dostavo majhnih satelitov v orbito, kar zagotavlja namensko vožnjo za vesoljska plovila, ki bi sicer morala leteti kot tovor nižje prioritete na večji nosilni raketi.

Raketa Electron lahko prenese tovor do 440 funtov (200 kilogramov) v 310 milj visoko (500 kilometrov) orbito, ki je sinhrona s soncem, kar je približno 1 % vzgonske zmogljivosti nosilca SpaceX Falcon 9. Rocket Lab prodaja namenske misije Electron že za 7 milijonov dolarjev.

E-pošta Avtor.

Sledite Stephenu Clarku na Twitterju: @ StephenClark1.

Source: https://spaceflightnow.com/2021/07/29/rocket-lab-returns-to-service-with-flawless-launch-for-u-s-military/