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Source: ONE News -
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Part of New Zealand's first space rocket has been found bobbing in the ocean off the Coromandel Peninsula coast.
A fisherman called researchers just after 10am to say he had seen the booster floating off Great Mercury Island.
The six metre rocket dubbed Manu Karere, or Bird Messenger, blasted off from the island on Monday afternoon, reaching an altitude of 100 kilometres before splashing down.
Rocket Lab technical director Peter Beck says the booster will be closely studied.
"We've only literally pulled it up a minute ago so we're just
looking at things like the fins and noticing that the fins are all
melted so that tells us we achieved velocity.
We're learning a lot."
Beck says they are still trying to track down the rest of the rocket.
He says the booster drops off at about 20 seconds into the trip, which means the rest of the body could be almost anywhere.
Rocket says the payload should not be handled as it was "potentially hazardous" and contained delicate instruments.
Monday's launch was delayed by seven hours when an fuel line aerocoupler froze, tethering the rocket to its launch pad.
A helicopter was sent to Whitianga to pick up another hydraulic coupling - worth about $6 - from an engineering supplier.
While the Atea-1 is New Zealand's first home-grown and privately-funded space rocket it is not the first to be launched from these shores.
In 1963 an imported rocket was launched to a height of about 75km to conduct upper atmospheric research in a joint venture between Canterbury University's physics department and the Royal New Zealand Air Force.
It was launched from Birdlings Flat, 44km southeast of Christchurch, spent about 2 1/2 minutes airborne and landed in the sea.
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