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Rocket Lab’s 13th Launch Fails to Reach Orbit After Unknown Problem
Today, Saturday, July 4 at 9.21 P.M. Eastern Time, the company’s “Pics Or It Didn’t Happen” mission lifted off as planned from the company’s Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula in New Zealand.
The primary payload on board was CE-SAT-1B, a satellite for Japanase company Canon Electronics. Also on the mission was the Faraday-1 satellite for U.K. company In-Space Missions, as well as five satellites for the U.S. Earth imaging company Planet.
The goal was to place the satellites into an orbit 500 kilometers above Earth. However, while the launch took place as planned, including separation of the second stage of the rocket, something subsequently went wrong.
[...] Problems emerged about six minutes into the flight, when a live video from the rocket was interrupted. The speed of the rocket then began to fall, along with a drop in altitude, before the mission’s failure was announced.
[...] The exact cause of the failure is not yet known. However, it is the company’s first failure on one of its commercial missions since it began full operations more than three years ago.
