Rocket Lab cleared by the FAA to resume launches after mission failure last month

Rocket Lab has already received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to resume its launch activities, following a failure during the second stage burn of its 20th Electron rocket mission that resulted in the loss of the payload. That’s a testament to Rocket Lab’s safety systems design, and everything working as intended when it encountered an anomaly, meaning that while the mission failed, it did so safely and without any risk to ground crew, the general population or other orbital objects.

This doesn’t mean Rocket Lab will actually resume launches immediately; while the FAA has determined that its existing launch license is still in good standing after the incident, the company itself will continue its investigation into the cause of the problem. Rocket Lab CEO and founder Peter Beck called the ongoing effort to determine the cause of the second stage engine shutdown “an intricate and layered fault analysis,” but also noted that they have already replicated the error in testing.

Now, the focus will be on working out exactly the sequence of events and figuring out what exactly caused what that led to the automatic safety shut-off. That process is expected to be done sometime “in the coming weeks,” and then at that point the company will proceed with resuming active flight activities.