Watch Rocket Lab's Second Attempt to Catch a Rocket Booster With a Helicopter - Gizmodo

Rocket Lab is gearing up for a 2nd spell astatine its unsafe stunt: catching a rocket mid-air utilizing a ample helicopter. Here’s however you tin drawback the action.

The company volition effort to drawback its Electron rocket aft its upcoming motorboat during a model that opens astatine 1:15 p.m. ET connected Friday, November 4. The rocket volition instrumentality disconnected from Pad B astatine Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 successful New Zealand, and a chopper volition beryllium acceptable to snag it arsenic it falls backmost towards Earth.

The daring mid-air drawback volition beryllium broadcast, and you tin tune successful to the enactment live. Rocket Lab volition statesman a unrecorded watercourse of the “Catch Me If You Can” ngo astir 20 minutes earlier the scheduled motorboat done its website. You tin besides ticker the motorboat and attempted drawback astatine the unrecorded watercourse below.

This is the company’s 2nd effort to propulsion disconnected the mid-air rocket catch, and it’s aiming to get it close this time. On May 2, a customized Sikorsky S-92 succeeded successful catching the Electron rocket arsenic it fell backmost to Earth pursuing its liftoff but ended up dropping it successful the Pacific Ocean. The pilots onboard the chopper noticed “different load characteristics” than those experienced during erstwhile trial flights and decided to driblet the rocket conscionable to beryllium safe.

Rocket Lab needs to retrieve its rocket earlier it touches the h2o to analyse its imaginable for reusability during aboriginal launches. During Friday’s launch, the company’s Electron rocket volition beryllium carrying a azygous outer known arsenic MATS, oregon Mesospheric Airglow/Aerosol Tomography and Spectroscopy. Funded by the Swedish National Space Agency, the outer volition survey gravity waves successful Earth’s precocious atmosphere.

The rocket’s 2nd signifier volition deploy the payload to orbit, portion its booster, oregon archetypal signifier engine, volition abstracted from the 2nd signifier and autumn backmost to Earth with the assistance of a parachute. A chopper volition beryllium acceptable to drawback the rocket by snagging the parachute enactment done a ample hook.

Rocket Lab is hoping to trim costs of upcoming launches by reusing its Electron rocket’s archetypal signifier the aforesaid mode SpaceX reuses its Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX’s rocket, however, lands vertically connected landing pads oregon offshore platforms alternatively than being hooked onto a hovering helicopter.

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