{"id":23279,"date":"2020-09-05T19:28:10","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T11:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/rocket-lab-launches-first-in-house-photon-satellite-new-light-as-surprise-payload-in-return-to-flight\/"},"modified":"2020-09-05T19:28:10","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T11:28:10","slug":"rocket-lab-launches-first-in-house-photon-satellite-new-light-as-surprise-payload-in-return-to-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/rocket-lab-launches-first-in-house-photon-satellite-new-light-as-surprise-payload-in-return-to-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocket Lab launches first in-house Photon satellite \u2018New Light\u2019 as surprise payload in return to flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"img-border featured-image wp-block-image--obfuscated\">\n<p>\t<img width=\"100%\" src=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/default-spaceexplored-related-guide.png?w=1500\" class=\"skip-lazy wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/default-spaceexplored-related-guide.png?w=320&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 320w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/default-spaceexplored-related-guide.png?w=640&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 640w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/default-spaceexplored-related-guide.png?w=1024&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/default-spaceexplored-related-guide.png?w=1500&amp;quality=82&amp;strip=all&amp;ssl=1 1500w\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" data-attachment-id=\"4603\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/2020\/09\/04\/rocket-lab-launches-first-in-house-photon-satellite-new-light-as-surprise-payload-in-return-to-flight\/electron-2\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/default-spaceexplored-related-guide.png\" data-orig-size=\"1700,1133\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-title=\"Electron\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/spaceexplored.com\/wp-content\/themes\/ninetofive\/dist\/images\/default-spaceexplored-related-guide.png?w=1024\"><br \/>\n\t<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Launch provider Rocket Lab has made a significant move towards becoming an end-to-end space solutions company with its \u2018First Light\u2019 proton satellite. What makes \u2018First Light\u2019 so important is that it will demonstrate much-improved subsystems that will enable long-duration operations. These subsystems include new power management, thermal control, and attitude control.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-4597\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Deployed on Rocket Lab\u2019s \u2018I Can\u2019t Believe It\u2019s Not Optical\u2019 mission on August 31, \u2018First Light\u2019 was poised to take the company from a launch provider to an end-to-end space solutions company. That\u2019s precisely what happened when Electron, the satellite launch vehicle, successfully deployed the customer payload and then transitioned the Kick Stage into Photon satellite mode, continuing on a standalone mission for the first time. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The move proves that Rocket Lab can now offer customers \u201claunch-plus-spacecraft\u201d missions with the Electron and Photon combination, eliminating many of the problematic factors that come with building a satellite and having a separate launch.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zC8RxgL9tK4?version=3&amp;rel=0&amp;showsearch=0&amp;showinfo=1&amp;iv_load_policy=1&amp;fs=1&amp;hl=en-US&amp;autohide=2&amp;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Under normal circumstances, once the kick stage has done its job, it would drop back down to Earth only to be burned up by the Earth\u2019s atmosphere. \u2018First Light\u2019 completely changes that by essentially repurposing the kick stage of Electron. Rocket Lab has said that they even hope to have a high-energy variant of Photon capable of embarking on lunar and interplanetary missions. The first use of this will be with NASA\u2019s Capstone mission where Photon will act as a pathfinder, guiding the Gateway spacecraft to the moon safely. <\/p>\n<p>\t<span class=\"outbrain-ad-label\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\t\t<script type=\"text\/plain\">\n\t\t\twindow.adSlotsConfig = window.adSlotsConfig || [];<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tadSlotsConfig.push( {\n\t\t\t\tslotID: '\/1049447\/Outbrain',\n\t\t\t\tslotName: 'div-gpt-ad-outbrain-ad-4597',\n\t\t\t\tsizes: [300, 250],\n\t\t\t\tslotPosition: 'mid_article'\n\t\t\t} );\n\t\t<\/script><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The full press release about Rocket Lab\u2019s \u2018New Light\u2019 satellite can be found here on the company\u2019s website. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Launch provider Rocket Lab has made a significant move towards becoming an end-to-end space solutions company with its \u2018First Light\u2019 proton satellite. What makes \u2018First Light\u2019 so important is that it will demonstrate much-improved subsystems that will enable long-duration operations. These subsystems include new power management, thermal control, and attitude control. Deployed on Rocket Lab\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23279\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}