Rocket Lab’s 13th mission finished in failure on Saturday, after the company’s rocket professional some kind of difficulty after launching to room. As a consequence, Rocket Lab misplaced its rocket, as properly as all the satellites it carried on board.

The company’s Electron rocket correctly took off at 5:19PM ET from Rocket Lab’s principal launch facility on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The start seemed to continue just fantastic for the initial vital minutes, but about 6 minutes into the start, dwell video clip from the rocket stalled. At that level, Rocket Lab’s livestream indicated that the rocket begun to lose velocity, and the auto dropped in altitude.

Rocket Lab ultimately minimize the livestream. Afterward, the corporation exposed that the Electron rocket experienced been misplaced for the duration of flight.

Rocket Lab’s CEO Peter Beck apologized for the failure on Twitter. “I am exceptionally sorry that we failed to supply our consumers satellites these days,” he tweeted. “Rest confident we will obtain the situation, correct it and be again on the pad before long.”

The mission, named “Pics Or It Didn’t Come about,” carried largely Earth-imaging little satellites. The principal payload was Canon Electronics’ CE-SAT-IB, intended to display Earth-imaging technology with high-resolution and huge-angle cameras. The rocket also carried five SuperDove satellites from the corporation Earth, created to picture Earth from previously mentioned. The previous payload was a tiny satellite known as Faraday-1, from In-Place Missions, which hosted a number of instruments from startups and other corporations that desired a ride to house.

Planet’s CEO Will Marshall introduced the decline of the satellites on Twitter, noting that the firm has plans to launch even much more satellites this summer months on two separate launches. “While it is by no means the end result that we hope for, the possibility of launch failure is just one World is generally ready for,” the business mentioned in a statement. Planet is about to start up to 26 of its SuperDove satellites on a European Vega rocket in August, from South The united states.

Because its inception, Rocket Lab has place 53 spacecraft into low Earth orbit on 12 individual missions, with this weekend’s launch the 3rd for Rocket Lab this yr. The vast majority of the company’s flight have been successful. Rocket Lab’s pretty first flight in 2017, named “It’s a Check,” was the only flight that didn’t run according to program the rocket correctly launched and created it to room, but did not arrive at orbit. All of Rocket Lab’s other missions have been photo excellent given that then, generating today’s flight the initially key failure for the business.