Rocket Lab USA, Inc. has announced that its next Electron mission, named “Baby Come Back,” will deploy seven satellites to space and include an attempt to recover the rocket’s booster after launch. The mission is scheduled to deploy from Pad A at Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand during a launch window that opens on July 14, 2023 UTC. Rocket Lab is also planning to conduct a marine recovery of Electron’s first stage as part of this mission. Rocket Lab’s recovery team will retrieve Electron using a customized vessel and transport the stage back to Rocket Lab’s production complex for analysis. Data from this recovered stage will inform Rocket Lab’s ongoing recovery and reuse program. The payloads aboard the mission include NASA’s Starling mission, which is a four CubeSat mission designed to test technologies to enable future “swarm” missions, Space Flight Laboratory (SFL), which selected Rocket Lab to launch Telesat’s LEO 3 demonstration satellite that will provide continuity for customer and ecosystem vendor testing campaigns following the decommissioning of Telesat’s Phase 1 LEO satellite, and Spire Global, which will launch two 3U satellites carrying Global Navigation Satellite System Radio Occultation (GNSS-RO) payloads to replenish its fully deployed constellation of more than 100 multipurpose satellites.
