Launch News Loss of Rocket Lab "Electron" rocket

[JonnyBGoode]

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/04/rocket-lab-satellite-launch-fails-before-reaching-orbit/

Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket from New Zealand yesterday, carrying seven satellites. However a failure of the second stage resulted in a loss of the craft.

 

[Urwumpe]

https://spaceflightnow.com/2020/07/04/rocket-lab-satellite-launch-fails-before-reaching-orbit/

Rocket Lab launched an Electron rocket from New Zealand yesterday, carrying seven satellites. However a failure of the second stage resulted in a loss of the craft.

Yeah, just saw the message from their CEO about the loss of vehicle. Hard to tell what happened, it was pretty sudden for us outside, maybe the flight controllers had more symptoms before the loss of signal.

 

[GLS]

Looks like it pitched up slightly before LOS... could the engine be losing thrust?

 

[Linguofreak]

Scott Manley's analysis notes the pitch up, plus a fade in the thermal glow from the bell just before LOS. He also notes that the speed and altitude telemetry in the video show a steady deceleration from loss of video until altitude tops out. Further he showed a graph of engine thrust (I forget what he said about the source, I think it may have been that somebody took a derivative of the velocity shown in the video, but don't quote me on that) that indicated a gradual decrease leading up to loss of video, followed by a rapid decline at about the video cutoff point.

So almost certainly an engine issue. Possibly, but far from certainly, a catastrophic failure (there is data consistent, in my view, with either a bang or a whimper). Manley's bet is on the latter.

 

[Urwumpe]

The electric pumps are a slight unknown for me in that behavior - could maybe the loss of thrust be caused by an electric failure there or was there a thermal overrun?

 

[Thunder Chicken]

The electric pumps are a slight unknown for me in that behavior - could maybe the loss of thrust be caused by an electric failure there or was there a thermal overrun?

IIRC the Electron second stage batteries are "hot swapped" somewhere around that point in the mission and the spent battery is ejected. Maybe the swap switching failed? As it isn't an expander cycle there is nothing to keep the pumps going other than that.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

A little dated, but interesting summary of cause of failure.

Rocket Lab identifies faulty electrical connector as cause of launch failure – Spaceflight Now

Sounds like one of those things where you learn what can go wrong the hard and expensive way. I wonder if they ever did a full duration hot test of the battery/pump system on the ground. Even if they did, it could be one of those edge things where you get lucky 12 times but get caught on 13.

Glad they got sufficient telemetry to isolate the problem.

 

[n72.75]

That's cool. I dont think I'd see. The final resolution/report on this before now.

Some lessons do in fact, need to be learned the hard way, aparently.