'Baby Come Back' Mission Launches from New Zealand

A mix of satellites for NASA and commercial customers Launched Monday (EDT) aboard an Electron rocket in Rocket Lab's 'Baby Come Back' mission. The mission included the recovery of the booster stage of the rocket in its efforts to develop a reusable launch vehicle.

The launch took place Tuesday morning (Monday evening EDT) from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.

Baby Come Back launched a total of seven satellites to a sun synchronous orbit for three customers: NASA, Space Flight Laboratory and Spire Global.

Baby Come Back was the seventh Rocket Lab Electron launch of 2023, 39th Electron launch overall, and the Company’s second recovery mission this year. After launch, Electron’s first stage returned to Earth under a parachute and complete a soft splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. Rocket Lab’s marine recovery vessel then moved into position to extract the stage from the ocean and transport it back to Rocket Lab’s production complex for analysis. This Electron first stage features new recovery upgrades including waterproofing systems to protect key engine and avionics components. Rocket Lab’s transition to marine recovery away from mid-air capture has been informed by previous recovery missions that showed Electron components and engines passed requalification testing following ocean splashdowns, so this next mission represents near final maturation of the marine recovery system in preparation for reflight of a booster.

Baby Come Back Launch Manifest

NASA: NASA’s Starling mission is a four CubeSat mission designed to advance technologies for cooperative groups of spacecraft – also known as swarms. Spacecraft swarms refer to multiple spacecraft autonomously coordinating their activities on orbit. Once positioned in orbit around Earth and spaced about 40 miles / 64 km apart, Starling’s spacecraft will demonstrate the ability to autonomously fly together while keeping track of each other’s relative positions and trajectories. They also will demonstrate the ability to plan and execute activities as a group, without guidance from mission controllers, including responding to new information from onboard sensors. Starling’s spacecraft will also demonstrate creating and maintaining an inter-spacecraft communications network that automatically adjusts to changing conditions. The Starling mission will test whether the technologies work as expected, what their limitations are, and what developments are still needed for CubeSat swarms to be successful.

Space Flight Laboratory (SFL): Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) selected Rocket Lab to launch Telesat’s LEO 3 demonstration satellite that will provide continuity for customer and ecosystem vendor testing campaigns following the decommissioning of Telesat’s Phase 1 LEO satellite. LEO 3 will serve an important role for low-latency customer applications testing, and for supporting LEO antenna and modem development efforts in advance of the Telesat Lightspeed network deployment.

Spire Global: Spire will launch two 3U satellites carrying Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) payloads to replenish its fully deployed constellation of more than 100 multipurpose satellites. Spire’s satellites observe the Earth in real time using radio frequency technology. The data acquired by Spire’s GNSS-RO payloads provide global weather intelligence that can be assimilated into weather models to improve the accuracy of forecasts.

(Source: Rocket Lab news release. Images provided and from file)