Rocket Lab to launch two climate change missions for Nasa from NZ in 2024
Rocket Lab, a space launch provider founded by former Southlander Peter Beck , has signed a double launch deal with Nasa to deliver its climate change research mission from New Zealand into low Earth orbit in May 2024. The mission, named Prefire (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) consists of two 6U CubeSats (nano-satellites) with a baseline mission length of 10 months, the company has said in a statement. Rocket Lab has launched six missions for Nasa since 2018, and the upcoming launches will be its seventh and eighth missions for the American space organisation. The Prefire mission was awarded to Rocket Lab through Nasas Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) programme. Rocket Lab founder and chief executive officer Peter Beck said such missions were core to the whole reason why Rocket Lab was founded in the first place to open up access to space to improve life on Earth. And climate change is a hugely urgent cause for us all. Its a privilege to be able to support this important mission and an honour to be a continued trusted launch provider for small satellite missions with big impact. Both the missions would deploy a small satellite each to a 525-kilometre circular orbit from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand from May 2024. The Prefire mission aimed to understand how much of Earths heat from the Arctic and Antarctica was lost to space. The analysis from the missions measurements would provide better projections for climate and ice models. Rocket Labs previous missions for Nasa included the Capstone mission to the Moon, the Tropics satellites for Nasas hurricane monitoring mission, and the Nasa Starling mission launched on Rocket Labs most recent Electron recovery launch last month. Rocket Lab had three launch pads at two launch sites, two of them at a private orbital launch site in Mahia, New Zealand, and a third launch pad in Virginia, US.