This is CBSI in the world.

I'm John Batchel.

From the surface of the planet Earth,

we're staying very firmly on the surface of the planet Earth

with Bob Zimmerman, who keeps the website behind the black,

because we're looking at commercial space.

This is Rocket Lab.

And the east coast of the United States,

Wallops Island, and NASA approving a critical step going forward with launches from Wallops Island.

Bob, what is flight termination software? Good evening to you.

Good evening, John. Well, Rocket Lab, which launches out of New Zealand, it's an American company.

It's a small-sat rocket company.

They launched small QSats and so forth, and they've been operational now for about three years.

Rocket Lab has been trying to get approval to launch rockets, its electron rocket from

from Virginia at Wallops Island, the Mid-Atlantic spaceport.

And they were ready to do this a year and a half ago.

They were ready to launch, they wanted to launch, but they have not been able to get approval of the flight termination software.

Now, you know, when they launch a rocket in the past, there is range offices standing by with their finger on the button.

And if that rocket starts to go out of control, they can destroy it at any point.

So it won't fly into populated areas.

Now, rocket has been using its own flight termination software down in New Zealand for years,

and very successfully, it's actually terminated a few launches because they had problems with the rocket.

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