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Rocket Lab’s first step towards SpaceX-style rocket reuse set for next Electron launch
Just over a year ago, Rocket Lab announced intentions to recover the first-stage of its small Electron launch vehicle, potentially making it the second private company on Earth – after SpaceX – to attempt to recover and reuse an orbital-class rocket.
In a media call earlier this week, Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck, revealed that the first recovery attempt has been expedited to mid-November and will occur following the next flight of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.
Like competitor SpaceX, Rocket Lab aims to recover its first stage Electron booster to decrease production time and increase launch cadence. Rocket Lab now has three launchpads to launch from and is licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration to carry out up to 130 launches per calendar year. In order to increase the launch cadence of the Electron, production times need to decrease. This can effectively be accomplished with the recovery, refurbishment, and reuse of the small, carbon composite rocket booster.
Recovery Doesn’t Happen Overnight
Initially, the first step of recovering an expended first stage – a guided and controlled soft water landing under a parachute and retrieval by sea-vessel – was intended for the seventeenth launch of the Electron prior to the end of this calendar year. However, Rocket Lab is now targeting the sixteenth launch for the first recovery attempt, a mission appropriately nicknamed “Return to Sender.” When asked what prompted the move to an earlier launch, Beck stated to reporters, “the guys got it done in time. With a new development like this, it’s always very dependent on how the program runs and the program ran very successfully.”
Rocket Lab has been working toward this recovery attempt for quite some time. In late 2018, Rocket Lab began collecting data during launches to inform future recovery efforts and determine whether or not it would even be feasible with a small-class rocket. The first major block upgrade of the Electron booster debuted on the tenth flight, “Running Out of Fingers,” in December 2019.
The first recovery milestone, a task Beck called getting through “the wall,” was achieved following the tenth flight. And again in January 2020 following a successful eleventh flight of Electron. The “wall” Beck refers to is the Earth’s atmosphere. Returning a booster through the atmosphere intact requires extreme precision in terms of re-entry orientation and how efficient the heat shield is.
Because the Electron is a small-class rocket, Rocket Lab was able to collect enough data from previous flights to determine that the carbon composite frame could withstand a fall through the atmosphere given a precise enough angle of attack to sufficiently distribute thermal loads. According to Beck, the process is referred to as an “aero thermal decelerator.”
Small Rocket Following in Big Footsteps
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space exploration company pioneered booster landing, recovery, and reuse efforts when the first Falcon 9 booster to successfully land returned to Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on December 21, 2015. SpaceX approaches the process of booster re-entry in a different way than what Rocket Lab has decided to attempt with Electron.
The Falcon 9 boosters perform a re-orientation flip and use the engines to perform what is known as a boost-back burn to set the rocket on the path to return to the Earth’s surface. The rocket then autonomously deploys titanium grid-fins that essentially steer, and slow the booster down as it falls through the atmosphere. Finally, the engines are re-ignited during a series of burns, and landing legs are deployed to propulsively land either at sea aboard an autonomous spaceport droneship or back on land at a landing zone.
The booster of Rocket Lab’s tenth mission in 2019 was outfitted with guidance and navigation hardware and cold gas attitude control thrusters used to flip and orient the booster to withstand the stresses of re-entry. Otherwise, no other hardware was incorporated to reduce the stresses of re-entry or slow the vehicle as it fell through the atmosphere. The booster made it through “the wall” intact and eventually slowed to a rate less than 900km per hour by the time it reached sea-level for an expected impact.
Eventually, Rocket Lab imagines its small Electron booster to be caught during a controlled descent under parachute canopy with a specially equipped helicopter and grappling hook. Beck and his team spent weeks outfitting a test article with prototype parachutes that were manufactured in-house.
A low-altitude drop test of a test article to simulate an Electron first stage was performed and a helicopter was able to snag the test article mid-air and deliver it one piece. Essentially, this proved that the concept was at least feasible and the small-class rocket could in fact be fully recovered to eventually be refurbished and reused. Since the completion of this drop test in April of 2020, the parachute design has been reevaluated and many more drop tests have been conducted. The final drop test with a more traditional system of a drogue parachute and an 18m ringsail type main parachute occurred in August of 2020 with a first stage simulator.
Next up, Rocket Lab plans to use the finalized design of the parachute system to bring Electron home safely for a soft landing in the Pacific Ocean. After which the booster will be collected by a recovery vessel, similar to the process that SpaceX uses to scoop its payload fairings from the water.
“Bringing a whole first stage back intact is the ultimate goal, but success for this mission is really about gaining more data, particularly on the drogue and parachute deployment system,” said Beck. With the parachute system verified the teams should be able to make any further iterations for a full capture and recovery effort on a future mission relatively quickly.
Rocket Lab will try to fully recover the “Return to Sender” expended first-stage booster once it separates approximately two and a half minutes after liftoff from Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Penninsula of New Zealand. Electron will support a rideshare payload of thirty smallsats. The window to launch the sixteenth Electron mission opens on November 16 UTC (November 15 PT / ET). A hosted live webcast of the launch and recovery attempt will be provided on the company website approximately fifteen minutes prior to liftoff.
SpaceX’s Starlink has launched its latest residential hardware kit: the V5. Designed for reliable high-speed internet, the new terminal represents a significant leap forward in user equipment.
The next generation Starlink Kit is designed to deliver reliable, high-speed home internet. Starlink V5 has a smaller form factor and lightweight design with greater power efficiency than the Starlink V4.
With speeds up to 375+ Mbps, Starlink V5 delivers seamless connectivity… pic.twitter.com/0dorU6n0oD
— Starlink (@Starlink) July 14, 2026
The new V5 Starlink kit features a dramatically smaller and lighter form factor, measuring approximately 384 mm x 306 mm x 34 mm and weighing just 1.1 kg, which is less than half the weight of the previous V4 model, which was 2.9 kg.
This compact design makes installation easier and more versatile, whether mounted on a roof, pole, or even integrated with a pipe adapter. An integrated LED light aids setup in low-light conditions.
Power efficiency sees major gains too. The V5 draws only 35-50W, reducing energy consumption and making it ideal for off-grid or solar-powered setups. Despite its smaller size, performance remains robust. Starlink claims peak speeds of 375+ Mbps, supported by a new Wi-Fi 6 Router Mini that covers up to 2,200 square feet and connects up to 235 devices simultaneously.
The kit maintains strong signal reliability in diverse environments, from urban rooftops to remote rural areas, as demonstrated in the promo footage released by SpaceX, showing seamless operation under cloudy skies.
These improvements expand suitable applications considerably. Households can enjoy lag-free 4K streaming, smooth video conferencing, online gaming, and smart home device management without interruption. The V5’s efficiency and portability also benefit RVs, small businesses, and temporary installations in disaster-recovery zones where quick deployment is critical. Its lightweight build lowers shipping costs and simplifies user handling compared to bulkier predecessors.
Starlink’s Broader Impact on Global Internet Connectivity
Since SpaceX began launching Starlink satellites in 2019, the constellation has grown rapidly. By mid-2026, over 10,400 satellites orbit Earth, with thousands more deployed annually. This massive low-Earth-orbit network delivers broadband to approximately 160 countries and territories, reaching millions of users who previously lacked reliable internet access.
Starlink plays a vital role in bridging the digital divide. It provides essential connectivity to remote communities, maritime vessels, airlines, and regions affected by natural disasters or infrastructure gaps. By combining advanced satellite technology with iterative hardware upgrades like the V5 kit, SpaceX continues to push the boundaries of global internet access, fostering education, economic opportunity, and emergency response capabilities worldwide.
As production ramps up, the V5 promises to make high-performance internet even more accessible to users everywhere.
Electric vehicle maker Lucid Group has denied rumors of an imminent bankruptcy after a report from this morning sent the stock on a dramatic drop on Wall Street, seeing losses of more than 40 percent during trading hours.
Lucid’s Director of Communications, Nick Twork, responded to the report from Eletric-Vehicles.com, which stated the company’s restructuring advisor, AlixPartners, was asked to review two decisions: taking Lucid shares private or filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
The report also claims AlixPartners told the Lucid board to “concentrate on Gravity production while improving its quality, and to temporarily hold back the Lucid Air, the sedan that has defined the company since its launch.”
Twork said:
$LCID The rumors are completely false. The company has sufficient liquidity to carry its operations well into next year, as recently published in its last quarterly filings, and it has not formed any special Board committee to explore the scenarios reported today. Our focus is…
— Nick Twork (@ntwork) July 14, 2026
Shares rebounded after the response to the report, halving its losses as the trading day neared 3 p.m. Eastern.
Lucid has struggled to get its sales off the ground and into more respectable numbers, but the company is in its early years, when things are hard to begin with. It is also backed by several notable investors, including the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), which has nearly limitless money and likely would not ditch an investment of this size so soon.
Lucid shares were down just 14 percent at the time of publication, a far cry from the 55 percent its losses topped out at during the day.
A Tesla owner who purchased a Model S Signature Edition, one of the final 250 units of the all-electric flagship vehicle that the company discontinued earlier this year, is attempting to sell the car despite a no-resale clause that prohibits reselling for the first year.
The car is being sold by J&S Autohaus in Ewing, New Jersey, and is priced at $260,490, well above the $159,420 that Tesla sold it for earlier this year.
🚨 The first Tesla Model S Signature Edition is up for sale for $260,490
Tesla placed a no-resale clause on the Model S and X Signature, so it will be interesting to see if the company takes any action. https://t.co/N9rKGHnbD6 pic.twitter.com/6FZhDL1KNR
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 14, 2026
To those who do not know, the Model S Signature was a highly exclusive, limited-run farewell variant of the Model S Plaid that was produced this year to mark the end of production of both the Model S and Model X, Tesla’s two flagship vehicles.
Limited to just 250 units with invite-only sales, it serves as a collector’s item celebrating the legacy of the Model S, which helped pioneer Tesla’s electric vehicle success since its 2012 launch.
It bundles top-tier performance with bespoke cosmetic and luxury upgrades, plus Tesla’s Luxe Package. Here’s what the Model S Signature has over the typical Model S Plaid:
- Exclusive Exterior – Unique Garnet Red Paint, matching door handles, gold Tesla “T” badges upfront, gold Plaid and Signature badging at the rear.
- Premium Interior – White Alcantara upholstery with gold piping/accents, gold Plaid seat badges, Signature-marked door sills, individually numbered dashboard plaque, gold puddle lights, special interior lighting sequence, and a custom Signature key fob.
- Performance Upgrades – Carbon-ceramic brakes with gold calipers
- Bundled Luxe Package – Full Self-Driving (Supervised), four years of Premium Connectivity, free lifetime Supercharging
- Performance Metrics – ~1,020 horsepower, sub-2-second 0-60 MPH, ~390-mile range
Tesla quickly introduced a No Resale Agreement for the Signature Editions of the Model S and Model X, which would penalize the seller for “the amount of $50,000 or the value received as consideration for the sale or transfer, whichever is greater.”
The company continues:
“If you sell or otherwise transfer the ownership of your Model S or Model X, the remainder of the Recommended Maintenance, Wheel and Tire Protection Plan, and Windshield Protection Plan will transfer automatically to the buyer. The Full Self-Driving (Supervised), Free Supercharging and Premium Connectivity will not transfer with the vehicle and will terminate once the ownership of the Model S or Model X is transferred.”
Tesla will likely come after the seller, especially as it has been about two months since Tesla launched deliveries.
SpaceX unveils Starlink next-gen V5 kit: here’s what’s new
Lucid denies rumors of bankruptcy after over 40% stock drop
