https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/19/watch-rocket-lab-launch-30-satellites-and-attempt-to-recover-a-rocket-for-the-first-time-live/

Launch provider Rocket Lab has a mission today – codenamed ‘Return to Sender,’ it’s the company’s 16th launch, and it will carry, among other things, a payload that will demonstrate a technology to help safely deorbit satellites. It has a secondary mission that’s potentially more important for Rocket Lab and the launch business in general, however: An attempted recovery of the first stage booster used during the flight. The launch is currently set for 8:44 PM EST (5:44 PM PST), and the webcast above will begin 30 minutes prior.

This is the first time that Rocket Lab will attempt to recover one of its launch vehicle first stages, and it’s significant in part because the company never intended to do this in the first place. Rocket Lab’s Electron was designed as a fully expendable launch vehicle, an intentionally different approach from other launch providers like SpaceX that focused on creating a smaller launch craft that could be constructed more quickly and launched more cheaply, but that sacrificed reusability as a trade-off.