New Delhi: Rocket Lab, the California-based company manufacturing rockets and spacecraft, almost pulled off a historic feat Tuesday, catching a falling rocket using a helicopter. 


The helicopter was able to catch the rocket but the crew had to quickly let it go for safety reasons. The rocket then fell into the Pacific Ocean to be collected by a waiting boat.


The rocket was launched from the remote Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand.


According to Peter Beck, who founded Rocket Lab, the complex task is similar to a “supersonic ballet”, news agency AP reported.


According to the report, the company attempted the feat as it is trying to make its small Electron rockets reusable. 


The company regularly launches its 18-metre (59 feet) rockets from Mahia to send satellites into space.






On Tuesday morning, the AP report said, the Electron rocket launched from the peninsula sent 34 satellites into orbit before its main booster section began falling to Earth. A parachute was used to slow its descent to about 10 m (33 ft) per second.


The Sikorsky S-92 helicopter crew then dangled a long line with a hook below the chopper to cut the booster’s parachute strings. The crew was able to catch the rocket at 1,980 m (6,500 ft) but had to jettison it again because the load on the copter exceeded the parameters from tests and simulations, the report said.


The entire exercise was live-streamed.






Beck called the mission a success, and said almost everything went to plan. Quoting him, the AP report said the load issue was “nothing in the scheme of things”, calling it a tiny detail that would be fixed soon. 


“They got a great catch. They just didn’t like the way the load was feeling,” Beck said in a conference call after the launch.










In a reference to the movie trilogy, “The Hobbit”, which was filmed in New Zealand, Rocket Lab named the mission “There And Back Again”.


It described the brief midair capture of the rocket as a milestone. By making rockets reusable, the company aims to increase its number of launches and also bring down costs.


Watch the entire video of the rocket launch and its capture here: