Rocket Lab is an end-to-end space company and launch service provider, specializing in small satellite launches with its Electron rocket, which has launched 63 times as of April 2025. They are also developing the larger Neutron rocket for constellation deployment. Rocket Lab provides complete space solutions including satellite design and manufacture, spacecraft components, and on-orbit management, serving commercial, civil, and defense markets, with major partners including NASA and the US Space Force. Key products include the Electron and Neutron rockets, Photon satellite bus, and various satellite components.
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General Atomics selected Rocket Lab on 2021-02-24 to launch an Orbital Test Bed satellite carrying the Argos-4 Advanced Data Collection System (A-DCS) hosted payload.
General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems signed a contract with Rocket Lab to launch the Orbital Test Bed satellite carrying the Argos-4 Advanced Data Collection System hosted payload.
This mission is Fleet Space Technologies’ second launch using Rocket Lab following the Proxima I and Proxima II launches from Māhia in 2018.
The payloads on Rocket Lab’s 19th Electron launch will be deployed to orbits between 450 km and 550 km above Earth.
StriX-α was launched on 2020-12-15 (Japan Standard Time) from Rocket Lab’s Mahia Peninsula launch site in New Zealand on an Electron rocket.
Rocket Lab will launch the "They Go Up So Fast" mission from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Māhia Peninsula in mid-March 2021.
M2 follows the successful M2 Pathfinder mission that was deployed in June 2020 on Rocket Lab’s 12th mission, "Don't Stop Me Now".
Photon Pathstone will remain in orbit after payload deployment to build flight heritage across the spacecraft’s subsystems ahead of Rocket Lab’s private mission to Venus in 2023.
Rocket Lab will rely on some recovered vehicle components for future launches.
Rocket Lab considers the primary risk of launches to be reliability.
Rocket Lab’s Photon spacecraft will test technologies needed for the later-2021 launch of NASA’s CAPSTONE lunar spacecraft, which will use Photon as a kick stage.
Rocket Lab's next launch will find the Electron launch vehicle carrying 100 satellites to orbit.
Rocket Lab had 97 satellites in orbit in 2020.
Four customers on Rocket Lab's upcoming launch are continuing their constellation builds.
Rocket Lab expects an even bigger monthly launch cadence in 2021.
Rocket Lab has created a Photon satellite bus for launch on its Electron rockets, a development similar to Astra’s modular spacecraft platforms.
Rocket Lab signed the launch contract with OHB less than six months before the 2021-01-20 launch.
Rocket Lab plans a second attempt to recover the Electron first stage in the second quarter of 2021 using an improved heat shield at the base of the rocket compared with the November flight.
Rocket Lab recovered an Electron first stage from a 2020-11-19 launch and has been testing that stage and its components.
Rocket Lab plans its next Electron launch for March 2021 and intends to include the company’s second Photon satellite along with several commercial payloads.