Rocket Lab to launch satellite-destruct system

Friday, 25 May 2018

Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck says its next launch could pave the way for a more sustainable space industry.

A space sail designed to quickly destroy old satellites and reduce the build-up of man-made junk orbiting the planet will be launched from New Zealand in the next couple of months.

US company Rocket Lab, founded by Kiwi Peter Beck, hopes to launch its next Electron rocket from the Māhia Peninsula near Gisborne between June 23 and July 6.

In addition to four tiny satellites, the rocket will also carry a late addition – an unfoldable 'drag sail' designed by German firm High Performance Space Structure Systems.

Beck said the sail could be attached to small satellites and deployed once they reached the end of their useful life, dragging them down from the very thin atmosphere of low orbit and into the Earth's atmosphere where they would burn up.

* Rocket Lab to launch Nasa's small satellites this year

Hit film Gravity helped draw attention to the perils of space junk in 2013.

* Rocket Lab will be carrying satellites from firm that has helped watch North Korea**

For the first test, the utra-thin sail will be attached to the final 'kick-stage' of Rocket Lab's Electron rocket itself, to accelerate its destruction.

The drag sail – weighing no more than a chocolate bar and measuring 2.5 square metres once deployed – was designed only to be attached to satellites that it would help destroy, and could not be used in space warfare to intercept and crash other satellites, he said.

That would be like 'trying to catch a bullet with an airbag on a moving train while blindfolded'.

The goal was to make the space business more sustainable, Beck said.

'There is a huge international push to make sure we use space responsibly and this is a simple way of ensuring satellites are 'de-orbited' quickly at the end of their life.'

Australia's Science Environment Space Centre (SERC) estimates there are more than 300,000 pieces of man-made space junk circling Earth that are more than a cubic centimetre in size, which sometimes crash into each other creating more junk.

SERC chief executive Ben Greene warned two years ago that there was now so much debris that a 'catastrophic avalanche of collisions which could quickly destroy all orbiting satellites' was now possible – a scenario depicted in hit space film Gravity.

Rocket Lab's first successful launch into orbit in January was watched by 25,000 people live online despite a series of launch delays.

Its next launch, which is being billed as its first commercial launch, will also be streamed online.

The launch was delayed from April after Rocket Lab detected unusual behaviour in a motor controller during a 'dress rehearsal'.

Beck said it had been difficult to identify the root cause of the controller problem, but that had now been found and fixed.

In addition to the drag sail, another late addition to the rocket's payload is a fourth satellite, designed by 150 United States high school students as part of an educational project, that will take pictures of Venus, stars and other celestial objects.

Economic Development Minister David Parker, who has to approve all satellite payloads launched from New Zealand, said the applications for the additional loads on the next Electron rocket were being reviewed by officials who would provide him with advice.

Beck would not comment on whether Rocket Lab would see a profit from the launch. 'We are well on track to be a cash-flow business this year.

'For a space company that is an impressive feat.'