Rocket Report: Clipper to fly on used Falcon boosters, BE-4 may slip further

Enlarge / Launch of Vega VV20 on Nov. 16, 2021, from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana. (credit: ESA/CNES/Arianespace)

Welcome to Edition 4.24 of the Rocket Report! This will be the last newsletter for the month of November, as I'll be taking off next week for the Thanksgiving holiday. But the Rocket Report will return in December when there will be several important launches, none more so than the James Webb Space Telescope.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below. (The form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site.) Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets, plus a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Rocket Lab tests helicopter recovery. In some ways, Rocket Lab's "Love at First Insight" launch on Wednesday evening was routine, delivering another two BlackSky satellites into low Earth orbit. This was the Electron rocket's 22nd overall launch, and the company says it has now launched a total of 107 satellites. As with a handful of previous missions that have experimented with first-stage reuse, the Electron booster made a controlled splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

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