Rocket Lab launches its first pair of NASA hurricane-watching satellites

Sunday evening, on a mission dubbed “Rocket Like a Hurricane,” Rocket Lab lifted off from LC-1B at its private spaceport in New Zealand with two NASA satellites designed to study hurricanes. This is the second launch of NASA’s TROPICS mission but the first with Rocket Lab and the first pair of satellites to reach orbit.

The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of SmallSats or TROPICS is a constellation of SmallSats that will provide almost hourly updates on future hurricanes. Current space bases solutions that researchers and forecasters use can only provide updates only six hours apart. Hopefully, these new satellites will increase that and improve models used to prepare coastal cities for these powerful storms.

Rocket Lab launches fourth Electron of 2023

Rocket Lab’s launch went off without a hitch, lifting off at 9:00 P.M. ET. However, this mission differed from previous Electron launches as the second stage was used to circularize the mission’s orbit rather than place it in an elliptical one. This was done because Rocket Lab’s kick stage, a third stage option of Electron, was used to make an orbit inclination change instead of doing the circularizing itself.

This was Rocket Lab’s fourth Electron launch of 2023 and the second from New Zealand. While not as quick as SpaceX’s Falcon 9/Heavy launch rate, this mission keeps Rocket Lab on track for its first double-digit year.

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NASA stated it was able to connect to both satellites in the early hours of the morning and begin sending commands. These satellites needed to be launched in the spring in order to be ready to start observations ahead of this year’s hurricane season. In addition, Rocket Lab will launch two more satellites in two weeks and will have to be perfectly timed to enter the constellation.

A complicated launch history

There will be a total of four satellites in NASA’s constellation. Originally it was planned to have six. NASA’s initially awarded the contract to launch all six payloads to Astra with its Rocket 3 launcher in part of its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare or VADR contract.

However, during the program’s first launch, Astra suffered a failure on the rocket’s second stage losing the rocket and its payload. Astra has since pivoted to a larger and newer Rocket 4 vehicle and canceled its Rocket 3 program. This pushed NASA to move to another launch provider and selected Rocket Lab last year to launch the mission on its Electron rocket.

Rocket Lab is already gearing up for the next TROPICS mission in two weeks, which will also occur from New Zealand.