May 25, 2017
(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxg4CHXRDy0)
New Zealand joins the list of “Spacefaring Nations” as Rocketlab launches their first Electron small-sat launcher on May 24th 2017! The rocket is black due to the carbon fiber body, with the white bands being ice from the fuel.
From what I can gather at this time, the vehicle made it through ascent, stage separation, 2nd stage ignition and payload fairing jettison. After that, it sounds like there was a 2nd stage failure, so the vehicle didn’t make orbit. Nonetheless, this test passed all the major milestones for vehicle flight and easily made it to space (though not orbit). All in all, a tremendous first flight for Rocketlab and hopefully the first of many launches to come!