Rocket Lab<\/b>\u2019s latest mission launched Telesat<\/b>\u2019s new LEO 3 demonstration satellite to orbit, less than two months after the satellite was announced. <\/p>\n
Space Flight Laboratory, which built the satellite, confirmed post-launch that it acquired signals from the satellite and its solar arrays deployed and passed initial satellite health tests. SFL built the 30-kg LEO 3 spacecraft on its Defiant microsatellite bus. The LEO 3 satellite features Ka- and V-band payloads and will provide continuity for customer and ecosystem vendor testing campaigns once the Telesat\u2019s Phase 1 LEO satellite is decommissioned. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to thank our valued partners Rocket Lab and SFL for their flawless execution on the LEO 3 mission,\u201d stated Dave Wendling, Telesat\u2019s CTO. \u201cWe\u2019re eager to get LEO 3 operational and resume important customer and vendor testing campaigns with next-generation terminals and modems in advance of our Telesat Lightspeed network deployment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocket Lab deployed seven satellites on the rideshare mission and also completed a successful ocean splashdown and recovery of Electron\u2019s first stage for its work to make Electron reusable. The mission, \u201cBaby Come Back,\u201d launched from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand on July 18 at 1:27 p.m. local time. <\/p>\n
It also launched NASA\u2019s Starling mission of four cubesats that will demonstrate flying in a swarm, autonomously coordinating flight activities in orbit. The mission also included two 3U satellites for Spire Global with Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) payloads to refresh its constellation. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re delighted to have delivered yet another successful Electron mission and would like to thank the teams at Space Flight Laboratory, Spire Global, and NASA, for entrusting us with their innovative science and tech demonstration missions,\u201d said Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck. \u201cWith this mission we\u2019ve made big strides toward reusability with Electron and we are now closer than ever to relaunching a booster for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rocket Lab\u2019s latest mission launched Telesat\u2019s new LEO 3 demonstration satellite to orbit, less than two months after the satellite was announced. Space Flight Laboratory, which built the satellite, confirmed post-launch that it acquired signals from the satellite and its solar arrays deployed and passed initial satellite health tests. SFL built the 30-kg LEO 3 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53084,"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-53083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53083"}],"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=53083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}