A Rocket Lab<\/b> Electron rocket is currently en-route to Virginia, and the launcher plans to hold its first mission from Wallops Island by the end of the year. Rocket Lab executives provided an update on its launch and space systems business lines on Wednesday during an investor presentation. <\/p>\n
HawkEye 360 is the first customer for the launch from Launch Complex 2 (LC2). Launch Complex 2 will be the company\u2019s first launch site in the United States. The complex has been finished since early 2020, when Rocket Lab rolled out an Electron vehicle on the pad, but there have been delays with the Autonomous Flight Termination System (AFTS) that will be used at the range.<\/p>\n
CEO Peter Beck said the Electron for the mission is set to arrive in the next week or so. \u201cThat should give everybody a pretty warm and fuzzy feeling about the LC2 to launch by the end of the year,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have absolute assurances from NASA that the AFTS will be complete on time. So that\u2019s great. And after a nearly two-year delay, we\u2019re super excited to get this first vehicle launched.\u201d <\/p>\n
The company also announced a new contract with a confidential commercial customer for a dedicated mission from the Virginia launch complex in the first quarter of 2023. The mission is scheduled to launch only weeks after the site\u2019s inaugural launch. <\/p>\n
Beck also shared what a crew capsule could look like for the Neutron rocket that is in development. Beck said it was \u201cnot a capsule announcement,\u201d and was light on details, but shared a photo. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not announcing a capsule \u2014 just to be clear \u2014 but we get lots of people asking us about about human rating. The vehicle is designed to be human-rateable,\u201d Beck said. \u201cYou don\u2019t design a vehicle like this without that in mind. We don\u2019t we don\u2019t have any particular programs focusing on capsules, but we\u2019re looking at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beck shared a larger update on Neutron development, and announced that NASA\u2019s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi will serve as the engine test facility for the reusable Archimedes rocket engine which will power the Neutron launch vehicle.<\/p>\n
Rocket Lab has been publicly traded for more than a year after going through a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger in 2021. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Rocket Lab Electron rocket is currently en-route to Virginia, and the launcher plans to hold its first mission from Wallops Island by the end of the year. Rocket Lab executives provided an update on its launch and space systems business lines on Wednesday during an investor presentation. HawkEye 360 is the first customer for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}