{"id":37267,"date":"2020-12-14T19:08:51","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/the-owls-night-begins-japans-strix-%ce%b1-satellite-launches-with-rocket-lab\/"},"modified":"2020-12-14T19:08:51","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:08:51","slug":"the-owls-night-begins-japans-strix-%ce%b1-satellite-launches-with-rocket-lab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/the-owls-night-begins-japans-strix-%ce%b1-satellite-launches-with-rocket-lab\/","title":{"rendered":"The Owl\u2019s Night Begins: Japan\u2019s StriX-\u03b1 satellite launches with Rocket Lab"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rocket Lab has launched the 17th flight of their small satellite launcher vehicle, Electron, on a mission named \u201cThe Owl\u2019s Night Begins\u201d after the only payload onboard: StriX-\u03b1.<\/p>\n

Liftoff occurred at 10:09 UTC (05:09 EST; 23:09 local time) on 15 December 2020 from Launch Complex 1A on the M\u0101hia Peninsula in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

The launch followed an announcement on 11 December that qualification of Rocket Lab\u2019s self-designed and built Photon spacecraft that will carry the small NASA CAPSTONE mission to the Moon in 2021 was underway.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Owl\u2019s Night Begins<\/b><\/p>\n

The 17th flight of Electron also marked the 7th and final flight for Rocket Lab of 2020.<\/p>\n

The year saw six successful missions and one, Flight 13: \u201cPics or It Didn\u2019t Happen,\u201d failure.  That issue was quickly identified and corrected, with Rocket Lab receiving authorization from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to resume flights just 27 days after the failure.<\/p>\n

Despite launching from New Zealand, Rocket Lab is a U.S.-based company and must operate under the FAA\u2019s commercial space jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

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Since returning to flight, the company has completed three successful missions \u2014 with Flight 17 originally slated to be the first to debut recovery of the Electron\u2019s first stage.  However, Rocket Lab surprised the industry in November by advancing that milestone to Flight 16, which was then given the name \u201cReturn To Sender.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Owl\u2019s Night Begins mission patch. (Credit: Rocket Lab)<\/p>\n

Ironically, despite being scheduled as the first flight to debut reuse, Flight 17 did not perform a recovery of the first stage as flight data and first stage inspections continue from the previous flight.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the mission carried a very different but arguably equally important upgrade to the Electron rocket in the form of a second, larger payload fairing.<\/p>\n

Announced in August 2020, the larger fairing option is 1.8 m in diameter while the primary fairing for Electron is 1.2 m in diameter.  The move to provide two fairing options to customers came from customer needs and requests for additional payload volume.<\/p>\n

The larger fairings are not a standard offering from Rocket Lab and can only be flown on flights with mission integration periods (the amount of time between the signing of a launch contract and the target launch date) greater than 12 months.<\/p>\n

One of those customers is Synspective, a Japan-based company seeking to provide orbital solutions to time and labor intensive ground-based observations.<\/p>\n

To accomplish that goal, the company plans to deploy a fleet of at least 30 small Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites as part of the StriX constellation.<\/p>\n

Strix is the genus name for owls, a creature renowned for its eyesight.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the StriX SAR satellites will be able to see through any and all weather conditions that would otherwise obscure the ground from optical cameras and other types of scanning instruments.<\/p>\n