So far, only SpaceX has pulled off recovering and relaunching the first stage of a space rocket. But Rocket Lab, another firm, hopes its “There and Back Again” mission will achieve the same
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskThere and Back Again will start with the lift-off of one of the company’s two-stage Electron launchers from its spaceport on New Zealand’s North Island. Minutes later, the attempt to recover the Electron’s spent first stage will begin. SpaceX, which first did this sort of thing in 2015, uses thrusters to set the descending first stages of its Falcon 9 launch vehicles gently upright on a landing pad.
This sounds both hard and risky. But, in a number of tests, the capture team has successfully grabbed the parachute line of a dummy rocket stage dropped from a second helicopter . As for keeping the whole shebang out of the helicopter’s rotors, a radio in the stage helps to do this by transmitting its position continuously to the flight crew.
To survive the Wall intact, the first stage will use thrusters to flip itself over, so that it is travelling tail first. The bottom part of the stage is already designed to handle the intense heat of the engine’s exhaust, so it makes sense to take advantage of its heat-resistance to slice a pathway through the air. The friction of re-entry will nevertheless create a bow wave of superheated air molecules surrounding the stage, which Mr Beck describes as “a hot knife of plasma”.
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