Reusable Electron: Analysis of Progress Toward the World's First Reusable Commercial Small Rocket

Reusable Electron: Analysis of Progress Toward the World's First Reusable Commercial Small Rocket

Utah State University, Logan, UT

Leading end-to-end space company Rocket Lab has significantly advanced its rocket reusability program over the past 12 months, bringing the Electron launch vehicle closer to becoming the world’s first reusable commercial orbital class small rocket. Applying the concept of a circular economy to rocketry, Rocket Lab’s reusability of Electron is expected to produce benefits to the space industry including reduced environmental pressure, innovation in rocket reuse technology, better sustainability of material supply, and lower launch costs to the burgeoning small satellite market.

Rocket Lab’s concept of operations for rocket recovery includes the capture of a returning Electron first stage mid-air by helicopter before the stage is brought back to the company’s production facilities for refurbishment and relaunch. The survival of Electron’s first stage through extreme atmosphere re-entry dynamics has been borne out across five missions since the reusability program began in mid-2019, including guided re-entries early in the program, stages returned from the ocean to the company’s production complex for analysis, parachute testing, mid-air helicopter capture tests, and helicopter mission operations to prove concept of operations for rocket stage capture. Iterative developments to the launch vehicle and substantiated data gathered across these missions has progressed Rocket Lab to attempt the first aerial capture of a returning rocket stage during a mission scheduled to launch in 2022.

This paper will discuss the program’s results to date and future planned development stages.