{"id":60514,"date":"2020-01-31T18:26:54","date_gmt":"2020-01-31T10:26:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/rocket-lab-launches-dedicated-nro-mission\/"},"modified":"2020-01-31T18:26:54","modified_gmt":"2020-01-31T10:26:54","slug":"rocket-lab-launches-dedicated-nro-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/rocket-lab-launches-dedicated-nro-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocket Lab Launches Dedicated NRO Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><strong>Rocket Lab<\/strong> launched its first mission of the year \u2014 dubbed \u201cBirds of a Feather\u201d \u2014 on Friday at 02:56 UTC from the company\u2019s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand\u2019s Mahia Peninsula. The mission carried&nbsp; dedicated payload NROL-151 for the <strong>National Reconnaissance Office<\/strong> (NRO). It was the smallsat launcher\u2019s 11th Electron launch.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck tweeted that the Kick Stage deployed the payload, confirming mission success. Rocket Lab opted for a guided re-entry of the Electron\u2019s First Stage, and it had a planned impact at sea.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThank you to the entire team who helped make our first dedicated launch from New Zealand a success,\u201d said U.S. Air Force Col. Chad Davis, director of the NRO Office of Space Launch. \u201cWe especially thank the men and women of both Rocket Lab and the New Zealand Space Agency for their focus and hard work helping us achieve another successful mission for the NRO. We look forward to our continued collaboration.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The NRO awarded Rocket Lab the contract under the Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) contract vehicle, which allows the office to explore launch opportunities for a streamlined, commercial approach for getting small satellites into space<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s an honor to be flying this mission for the NRO,\u201d Max Munsey of Rocket lab said on Friday\u2019s webcast. \u201cThe data collected by the NRO is used to support a variety of military and civil operations such as keeping U.S. and allied forces out of harm\u2019s way, as well as supporting civil agencies to asses devastation caused by natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires and to assist with the associated relief efforts.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Rocket Lab announced in January that the company has started construction on a new Long Beach, California, facility which will serve as its headquarters, provide incremental production capacity, and Mission Control Center capabilities. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rocket Lab launched its first mission of the year \u2014 dubbed \u201cBirds of a Feather\u201d \u2014 on Friday at 02:56 UTC from the company\u2019s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand\u2019s Mahia Peninsula. The mission carried&nbsp; dedicated payload NROL-151 for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). It was the smallsat launcher\u2019s 11th Electron launch.&nbsp; Rocket Lab CEO [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60515,"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-60514","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\/60514"}],"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=60514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}