Rocket Lab is giving their various spacecraft platforms unique names, rather than calling them all “Photon”.
- Photon: The basic kick-stage + power, propulsion, and communications.
- Explorer: Optimized for lunar and interplanetary missions.
- Pioneer: Capable of re-entry and payload return to Earth.
- Lightning: Optimized for long-term communications and sensing in LEO.
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I have to admit I know barely anything about Rocket Lab. I’ve only ever seen launches of satellites into orbit. I had no idea they were sending stuff to the moon and Mars.
Are those future plans or have they actually sent stuff away from the earth?
Almost all of their launches so far have only been to Earth orbit, but they did launch the CAPSTONE mission to the moon for NASA. CAPSTONE tested out the near-rectilinear halo orbit that the Lunar Gateway space station will use.
A couple of their spacecraft are scheduled to launch to martian orbit on the maiden flight of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket later this year, as part of the EscaPADE mission to study Mars’ magnetosphere.
At the end of this year or early next year, Rocket Lab plans to launch the Venus Life Finder mission in collaboration with MIT.
That’s awesome! I looked forward to following this stuff.
I can’t believe a rocket launched from NZ to orbit the moon and I had no idea!
