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Rocket Lab to attempt full recovery of first stage on next launch

In announcing the launch window, opening July 14th, for its next New Zealand launch, Rocket Lab also revealed that it will attempt the full recovery of the first stage after it splashes down softly in the ocean using parachutes.

Rocket Lab is also planning to conduct a marine recovery of Electron’s first stage as part of this mission. Rocket Lab’s recovery team will retrieve Electron using a customized vessel and transport the stage back to Rocket Lab’s production complex for analysis. Data from this recovered stage will inform Rocket Lab’s ongoing recovery and reuse program.

The company recently decided to forego any further attempts to snatch the first stage in the air before splashdown using a helicopter. Instead, it thinks it can recover the stage in good enough condition out of the water to use it or its engines again.

The launch itself will carry seven smallsats, four for NASA and three for two commercial companies.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

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