<\/p>\n
Rocket Lab\u2019s ($RKLB) strategy to own every aspect of the space value chain\u2014from satellite manufacturing to launch\u2014seems to be paying off.<\/p>\n
The Space Force awarded Rocket Lab a $397M contract yesterday to fund the development, launch, and operations of a constellation of \u201cFlatellites\u201d\u2014Rocket Lab\u2019s latest flat-packed satellite design\u2014under the Space Force\u2019s Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator program (SB-AMTI).<\/p>\n
The goal of the SB-AMTI program is to complement the DoD\u2019s terrestrial and airborne sensors. Besides Rocket Lab, other recipients of the combined $615M in new funding were Systems & Technology Research, and an unnamed third company not revealed for security reasons.<\/p>\n
The mission: <\/strong>Rocket Lab\u2019s contract tasks the company with building and launching an undisclosed number of Flatellites, each equipped with space-based sensors and low-latency, high-bandwidth comms links to enable real-time identification and tracking of airborne threats.<\/p>\n These satellites will launch on Rocket Lab\u2019s yet-to-fly Neutron medium-lift launch vehicle. Once the sats are in orbit, Rocket Lab will use AI to parse the large quantities of data to spot moving targets\u2014intel that the company will share with Space Force. <\/p>\n For Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, the contract win is the direct result of the company\u2019s efforts to build each part of an end-to-end capability.<\/p>\n \u201cOur vertically integrated, constellation-class satellite capabilities, mission operations, and launch services uniquely position us to deliver innovative solutions that meet the urgent needs of the Space Force,\u201d Beck said in a statement.<\/p>\n IKEA for space: <\/strong>Rocket Lab unveiled its Flatellite spacecraft last year. As the company\u2019s fifth spacecraft design, the sat is purpose-built for high-performance sensing and telecom constellations.<\/p>\n As the name suggests, the flats are designed to stack on top of one another inside a launch vehicle\u2014much like SpaceX\u2019s Starlink sats\u2014maximizing the number of flats that can fly per launch, and lowering the total deployment cost of the constellation. The Flatellites rely on Rocket Lab\u2019s MAX constellation flight software and InterMission ground software, making the sats capable of meeting the cyber-security needs of national security customers.<\/p>\n The Flatellites also rely heavily on components Rocket Lab has spent years building and acquiring, with Beck describing the new design as the \u201cfinal step in Rocket Lab\u2019s ultimate vision of being a truly end-to-end space company.\u201d<\/p>\n \n The post Rocket Lab Wins $397M Contract to Build and Launch Threat-Tracking \u2018Flatellites\u2019 appeared first on Payload.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rocket Lab\u2019s ($RKLB) strategy to own every aspect of the space value chain\u2014from satellite manufacturing to launch\u2014seems to be paying off. The Space Force awarded Rocket Lab a $397M contract yesterday to fund the development, launch, and operations of a constellation of \u201cFlatellites\u201d\u2014Rocket Lab\u2019s latest flat-packed satellite design\u2014under the Space Force\u2019s Space-Based Airborne Moving Target […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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-61635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61635"}],"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=61635"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61697,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61635\/revisions\/61697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}