Month: May 2022

Enlarge / After being caught by a helicopter, and then dropped into the sea, an Electron booster is brought back to New Zealand by boat on Tuesday. (credit: Rocket Lab)

On Monday evening Rocket Lab launched its 26th Electron mission, successfully deploying a record 34 small satellites into orbit. But attention for this mission was far more focused on what happened after the launch, not during it.

That's because, for the first time, Rocket Lab attempted to catch the falling first stage of its Electron booster with a helicopter. And briefly, they succeeded with this mid-air recovery.

As the rocket descended beneath its main parachute at about 10 meters per second, a drogue chute trailed behind with a 50-meter line. A Sikorsky S-92 helicopter tracked this descending rocket, and it, too, had a 50-meter line with a hook on the end of it.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

As we noted a couple of weeks ago with our announcement post, we're fast approaching the date for Ars Frontiers, our inaugural single-day conference. The event will be held next week, on May 12, in Washington, DC.

We're going to be exploring the interconnectedness of innovation—looking at how the things that change our world are interlinked. As we peer into our crystal balls, we're also going to try to answer a very pressing question: Can we still drive explosive growth in these fields while prioritizing ethical technology and sustainability?

Because conversation emboldens innovation, we've assembled a room full of subject matter experts in areas like human space flight, machine learning, information security, and bioscience to help us prognosticate. At Frontiers, Ars Technica editors will sit down and interact with those experts, and we'd love to have you on board for the ride. More details on how to request an invite to join us in person can be found at the end of this announcement.