Rocket Lab to offer moon rides for small payloads, ground services

The USA based enterprise Rocket lab is going to open payload-carrying services to the lunar orbit along with the Lagrange points L-1 and L-2. The company also announced that Earth orbit customers would also get some ground station services. They have not yet disclosed the cost of the services.

Rocket Lab will offer these payload services with their all-new satellite bus, Photon. The Chief Executive of Rocket Lab, Mr. Peter Beck, revealed that the Photon bus is capable of carrying 30 Kilograms to the Earth’s natural satellite.

Rocket Lab is mainly targeting to work as a forerunner for other larger missions by carrying the necessary equipment to their target place. Mr. Beck also revealed that there had been a lot of interest from numerous private companies and governments. Still, no one has made any official bid yet.

The company has recently unveiled a new bipropellant system for the Curie Kick stage of the launch. This same propellant will power the Photon missions. During the vehicle launch of October 16, 2019, Rocket lab showed the feasibility of that system.

The company is targeting to be the one-stop solution for its range of customers. To achieve just that, Rocket Lab is looking to provide both Electron launch and the access to the Photon spacecraft to the KSAT network.

Rocket Lab is now set to smoothly carry out the tenth Electron Launch during the upcoming month of November. They are also planning to demonstrate their capability to take up flight projects at a high rate. There are two launches scheduled only seven days apart at the end of December.

Peter Beck said that they would try to incorporate some improvements during the tenth launch of the Electron bus. This time, they are targeting to send the vehicle in a deep atmosphere rather than a parachute recovery process.