Wallops Flight Center, VA – To the southwest, the last colors of sunset lit the rim of the sky as a crescent moon and two planets lined up overhead. It was a beautiful scene, but one that everyone ignored. Instead, all eyes were on a bright patch of artificial light on a barrier island a few miles away. The lights there were focused on a small, slender needle—small enough to be towed to the launch pad by a pickup truck.
For years, the Electron rocket and the company behind it sat in limbo at the Virginia launch site, awaiting various approvals — for regulators to share enough paperwork to convince everyone the launch was safe. Then the weather and the holidays at the end of the year pushed the start further and further back. But on Tuesday, everything went as smooth as can be imagined, and the electron shot into orbit almost as soon as the launch window opened.
The launch is critical for Rocket Lab, which has in some ways invested in the company’s future in its Virginia operations. But it’s also crucial to the launch site, which is billed as a spaceport but hasn’t seen much traffic leave Earth.
About this start
The Electron is a relatively small rocket, capable of only delivering a few hundred kilograms into orbit, so the launch experience is very different from massive vehicles like the Shuttle, SLS, and Falcon Heavy. It’s quite a bit smaller than even the Falcon 9, so the launch experience is correspondingly different from what I’ve heard from others about what it’s like to experience a rocket launch. (My only previous experience was a vaguely remembered one over 40 years ago.)
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While the electron was still visible from two miles away when flames appeared underneath, it quickly disappeared as it exited the launch pad, the bright flames quickly being all that could be seen thanks to the nighttime launch. Around the same time, the sound came from the launch pad two miles away. The best description I’ve read compared it to the sound of ripping fabric being shifted into bass registers. On a heavy enough rocket, the bass is strong enough to create a physical feel; Electron lacked that punch.
Its light weight also caused Electron to leave the pad in a hurry. Heavy launch vehicles often seem to hesitate just after leaving the launch pad, and my mind struggles to accept that their acceleration is enough to send them into space. If Electron had a similar moment, it was over just as quickly as it began.
From there, the launch benefited from the dry, cold and incredibly clear skies that are prominent in East Coast winters. Things went dark as the main engines shut down, but a bit of light quickly returned as the second stage engine took over. The second stage remained dimly visible to the naked eye until a few minutes before shutting down. During this time, a few objects were briefly visible below the second stage – likely the first stage and/or fairings catching the last of the sunlight high up or heating up in the atmosphere.
Subsequent reports indicated that the three satellites on board had successfully separated and established communication with their operator, Hawkeye360, who will use them to track radio sources on Earth.