Only 8 weeks after the failed launch on July 4, the small satellite launch company Rocket Lab will start a commercial launch again. The company has determined the time for this special commercial launch mission, which will be as early as 3:05 pm on August 27th local time in New Zealand.

On July 4, Rocket Lab carried 7 small satellites on its 13th mission to space at the New Zealand launch site. However, the Electron rocket used for that launch mission shut down prematurely only a few minutes after it ignited and took off. The rocket did not enter the predetermined orbit, fell back to the earth’s atmosphere and burned, causing all the satellites on board the spacecraft to collectively "kill."

Rocket Lab revealed at the end of July that after a month-long internal investigation and determination of the root cause of the failure of the previous launch mission, it has obtained the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) permission to restart its launch mission. The engine shut down prematurely. The problem was with a component that seemed to be good, but it had not undergone rigorous and thorough testing. Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck (Peter Beck) said that this problem could have been overcome by simple changes to the production process.

The engine that appeared in the last launch was shut down prematurely, but the rocket did not explode, which means that Rocket Lab can continue to obtain data from the rocket after this premature shut down, allowing the company to figure out the reason for the premature shutdown of the engine .

In comparison, the space launch missions of other space exploration companies often take longer to resume launch after a failure. For example, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 exploded during its launch mission in September 2016. The Falcon 9 was carrying a communications satellite worth 1.3 billion yuan, belonging to Facebook’s Internet.org project, aimed at helping Africa. Projects for residents in remote areas to use Internet services. After this failure, it took SpaceX 4 months to restart the launch. (Tianmen Mountain)

Source: NetEase Technology Report, translated by Google Translate