Rocket Lab says it has concluded an extensive review into the cause of a failed mission launch on May 15 from its facility on Māhia Peninsula.
The root cause of the issue that resulted in the loss of “Running Out Of Toes” had been identified and corrective measures were now in place, the company said in a statement.
The rocket, which was carrying two Earth-observation satellites for BlackSky, a global monitoring company, would be back on the pad for the next mission later this month.
The company did not give details about the next Electron mission but said more information would be made available in the coming days.
An internal review, with oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), concluded that an issue occurred within the second stage engine igniter system – almost three minutes and 20 seconds into the flight.
A corruption of signals within the engine computer caused “the Rutherford engine’s thrust vector control (TVC) to deviate outside nominal parameters” and resulted in the engine computer commanding zero pump speed, shutting down the engine.
The fault resulted from a previously undetectable failure mode within the ignition system that occurs under a unique set of environmental pressures and conditions, the statement said.
The issue was not evident during extensive pre-flight testing for the mission, including more than 400 seconds of burn for that particular engine.
Rocket Lab had since been able to reliably replicate the issue in testing and had implemented redundancies in the ignition system to prevent any future reoccurrence, including modifications to the igniter’s design and manufacture, the statement said.
“The anomaly review confirmed that Electron’s first stage performed flawlessly during the mission and did not contribute to the flight issue. As a result, Rocket Lab was able to conduct a successful re-entry, ocean splashdown and recovery of the first stage as planned, marking a major milestone in the company’s program to make Electron a reusable launch vehicle.”
The FAA confirmed in June that Rocket Lab’s launch licence remained active.
