Rocket Lab early today successfully completed its ninth launch (out of a 27-launch contract) for the Japanese radar satellite company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
59 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 59 to 51.
Rocket Lab yesterday announced it has been awarded a $90 million contract by the Space Force to build two geostationary satellites for the military’s “space doman awareness” constellation.
Though Rocket Lab has built and launched a number of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites for both commercial and military customers, these two satellites will be the first in geosynchronous orbit.
Rocket Lab will serve as prime contractor and end-to-end mission provider, responsible for spacecraft design and manufacture, integration of the in-house Heimdall optical payload produced by Rocket Lab Optical Systems, launch integration onto a government-furnished launch vehicle, and on-orbit operations for up to five years following commissioning. The two satellites will be built on Rocket Lab’s Lightning bus, adapted for the thermal, radiation, propulsion, and station-keeping demands of GEO.
Though Rocket Lab is mostly considered a rocket company, it has done an excellent job diversifying its capabilities so as to sell aerospace products across a range of areas. This contract continues that successful trend.
Artist’s rendering of Neutron’s first stage fairings opening
to deploy the payload with the second stage engine.
Rocket Lab announced yesterday that it has won a big new launch contract with an undisclosed customer for three launches of its Electron rocket and five launches of its new Neutron rocket.
The multi-launch agreement includes five dedicated Neutron launches and three dedicated Electron launches baselined to launch between 2026 and 2029. The missions will lift-off from both Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and Rocket Lab Launch Complex 3 in Virginia. Pricing for these launches aligns with Rocket Lab’s average selling price for Neutron and Electron. The remaining terms of the deal are undisclosed.
Based on the known average launch prices for these rockets, this deal is likely worth somewhere between $250 million to $300 million. That a customer was willing to purchase five launches of Neutron before the rocket has even launched is also a strong statement of confidence in Rocket Lab itself. The company hopes to do the first test launch of Neutron before the end of this year.
Rocket Lab also made a slew of other announcements yesterday. The company will be partnering with Anduril as part of its 20-launch contract with the War department to use its suborbital HASTE version of its Electron first stage for hypersonic testing. The deal involves three of those twenty launches.
The company also announced a partnership with Raytheon to “demonstrate advanced capabilities for the United States Space Force’s Space Based Interceptor program.” Rocket Lab also revealed it is acquiring the California robotic company Motiv Space Systems that has built equipment used on the Mars rover Perseverance.
Rocket Lab might not be as big as SpaceX, but it has unquestionably been as successful in its own way.
Rocket Lab today successfully placed eight smallsats for Japan’s space agency JAXA, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.
Because all of JAXA’s rockets are presently grounded due to technical failures, Japan’s space agency has had to turn to Rocket Lab. In fact, these eight satellites were originally supposed to launch on JAXA’s Epsilon-S rocket, which remains grounded after an explosion during a static fire test. There have been no updates on the status of Epsilon-S since December 2024.
Rocket Lab was also supposed to do a suborbital hypersonic test flight yesterday out of Wallops Island in Virginia, using the first stage of Election in its HASTE suborbital configuration. As this is a test for the War Department, little information is generally released. This video from a distance confirms the launch apparently took place, but whether it was a success or not remains unknown. That Rocket Lab’s announcers did not tout its success either before or after today’s JAXA launch — as they have routinely done in the past — suggests something might have gone wrong, though this too is pure speculation.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
48 SpaceX
21 China
6 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
For the third straight year SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, 48 to 38.
Rocket Lab this morning successfully placed a European Space Agency (ESA) smallsat into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.
The smallsat, dubbed Celeste, is the first of two such demo satellites that ESA has contracted Rocket Lab to launch. They are designed to test a low Earth orbit constellation for providing global navigation and location information to users on the ground, similar to the U.S.’s GPS constellation. Celeste will work from low orbit with Europe’s medium orbit Galileo constellation, but being smaller will be cheaper and faster to build and launch.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
38 SpaceX
15 China
5 Rocket Lab
4 Russia
SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.
The launch pace continued today with two American commercial launches.
First Rocket Lab placed a Synspective radar satellite into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This was the company’s eighth launch for Synspective, out of a 27-launch contract.
Next, SpaceX placed 25 more Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2026 launch race:
36 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
SpaceX continues to lead the entire world combined in total launches, as it did in both ’24 and ’25.
Rocket Lab yesterday announced it has won a $190 million contract from War Department to do another twenty suborbital test launches using its HASTE first stage version of its Electron rocket.
Rocket Lab Corporation … today announced the signing of its single largest launch agreement yet: a $190 million contract for a block buy of 20 hypersonic test flights with its HASTE launch vehicle for the Test Resource Management Center (TRMC) Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) 2.0 program – a U.S. Department of War effort executed in partnership with Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane Division (NSWC Crane) to rapidly accelerate hypersonic flight tests and advanced aerospace technologies shaping the future of defense missions.
Under MACH-TB 2.0 Task Area 1, led by Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc, Rocket Lab will perform 20 hypersonic test flights with its HASTE launch vehicle over a four-year period. The first of these 20 new missions is expected to take place within months of contract signing, demonstrating Rocket Lab’s operational efficiency and ability to move quickly to meet modern warfare demands.
This is the work that Stratolaunch had hoped to grab with its giant Roc airplane and Talon hypersonic test vehicle. Rocket Lab saw an opportunity and quickly reconfigured the first stage of its Electron rocket for the same work, dubbing this version HASTE. In the past three years both it and Stratolaunch have done hypersonic test flights, but Rocket Lab’s work has been more frequent and extensive, doing seven HASTE hypersonic launches to one test by Stratolaunch. That success apparently convinced the military to give Rocket Lab this larger new contract.
Rocket Lab yesterday successfully placed a satellite into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand.
The company did not reveal the name of its customer, though according to this source the satellite was a Blacksky Earth imaging satellite, the fourth launch of a four-launch contract with that satellite company.
The 2026 launch race:
28 SpaceX
8 China
3 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)
Not only is SpaceX this year leading the entire world combined in total launches — as it did in both ’24 and ’25 — at the moment its pace is about twice as much as the rest of the globe.
Built by Rocket Lab for NASA and launched in November 2025, the company has now completed the in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters and is about to hand operations over to the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (UC-Berkeley).
With both spacecraft now fully commissioned and successfully operating at the Earth–Sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), Rocket Lab is preparing to hand over operational control to [UC-Berkeley], who will lead science operations at L2 and prepare the mission for its cruise to Mars.
Under contract from [UC-Berkeley], Rocket Lab was selected to design, build, and provide commissioning operations of the two high delta-V Explorer-class interplanetary spacecraft for ESCAPADE. Rocket Lab moved from concept to launch readiness in just over three years, proving commercial collaboration can deliver important science key to supporting future human and robotic exploration of Mars on ambitious schedules and for significantly smaller budgets than typical interplanetary missions. This speed was made possible through Rocket Lab’s vertically integrated spacecraft production, with key components including solar arrays, reaction wheels, propellant tanks, star trackers, radios, avionics, and flight software designed and built in-house.
Launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in November 2025, the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, completed spacecraft commissioning and executed two precise trajectory correction maneuvers, placing both spacecraft into their loiter trajectory near L2, approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
Both spacecraft will be sent on their way to Mars in December 2026 when orbital mechanics between the Red Planet and Earth are right for the journey. Once in Mars orbit the two orbiters will allow for a three-dimensional study of the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ atmosphere.
Though this is a NASA-funded mission, note that it was built a commercial company and operated not by NASA but by a university. For this reason, it was not only built fast and at a low cost, it uses an innovative flight path that allowed it to be launched anytime and wait in orbit for the right moment to go to Mars. This last innovation provides for a lot more flexibility.
Rocket Lab late yesterday successfully completed its seventh HASTE suborbital mission, using the first stage of its Electron rocket to do a hypersonic test mission for the War Department.
In this case, the test vehicle was from the Australian company Hypersonix, and it lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Electron launchpad at Wallops Island in Virginia.
This was Rocket Lab’s second flight for this particular military agency in the past three months, and its eleventh overall launch from Wallops Island. The company’s quick reconfiguration of Electron for hypersonic suborbital testing made it possible for it to capture a bulk of the military’s suborbital hypersonic testing business that others, such as Stratolaunch, had hoped to win.
The New Zealand government has now increased the number of launches it will allow from within its territory each year from 100 to 1,000.
The government is raising the total number of launches allowed to 1000, as the cap set at 100 in 2017 comes close to being breached. The US-NZ company Rocket Lab dominates the launch market from its pad at Mahia.
Space Minister Judith Collins said the 100 cap was likely to be hit this year. “This change ensures our space and advanced aviation industries can continue to expand while operating within clear environmental boundaries.” The environmental impact from more debris from space vehicle launches had been newly determined to be low.
The rules would have required a special marine consent for every launch over the 100 cap.
The article at the link is a typical leftist anti-achievement propaganda piece, spending more time airing the complaints by one physics professor than reporting the details of this new ruling. Nonetheless, this decision will likely benefit Rocket Lab’s operations significantly, as it hopes this year to make as many as two launches per month. While that remains below the old 100 launch cap, the new 1,000 launch cap gives it a limit it won’t face for decades, if ever.
It will also likely benefit several spaceports to the west in Australia. Some of their launches would likely need New Zealand clearance, and this new limit will ease their regulatory burden.
Two American companies, Rocket Lab and SpaceX, successfully completed launches during the evening of January 29-30.
First, Rocket Lab today (January 30th in New Zealand) placed a South Korean test smallsat, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. The satellite is the first of a planned mass-produced constellation to provide precise observations of the Korean peninsula.
Next, SpaceX placed another 29 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in the early morning hours. The first stage completed fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The 2026 launch race:
13 SpaceX
5 China
2 Rocket Lab
Early this morning Rocket Lab successfully placed into orbit two satellites for the satellite company Open Cosmos, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the company’s two launchpads in New Zealand.
The satellites appear to be test satellites designed to demonstrate Open Cosmos’s capabilities.
The 2026 launch race:
9 SpaceX
5 China
1 Rocket Lab
Artist’s rendering of Neutron’s first stage fairings opening
to deploy the payload with the second stage engine.
According to an update posted yesterday, during a pressure test of a first stage tank for Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket, the tank ruptured.
As the company pushes Neutron to the limits and beyond to qualify its systems and structures for launch, qualification testing of the Stage 1 tank overnight resulted in a rupture during a hydrostatic pressure trial. Testing failures are not uncommon during qualification testing. We intentionally test structures to their limits to validate structural integrity and safety margins to ensure the robust requirements for a successful launch can be comfortably met.
There was no significant damage to the test structure or facilities, the next Stage 1 tank is already in production, and Neutron’s development campaign continues while the team assesses today’s test outcome.
The team is reviewing the Stage 1 test data, which will determine the extent of the impact to Neutron’s launch schedule.
The company was aiming to do Neutron’s first launch in the first quarter of this year. Though the press release is vague on this point, its language suggests the rupture did not occur at the expected maximum pressure, but took place sooner, at a lower pressure level. If the tank failed at maximum pressure, then there would be no need to reconsider the launch schedule. A failure at lower pressures would require changes in tank design, and thus a launch delay.
The company says it will provide an update in February, which further suggests a launch in the first quarter is now unlikely.
Rocket Lab this evening successfully completed its 7th launch of a radar satellite for Japanese company Q-Shu Pioneers (iQPS), its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the two launchpads in New Zealand.
Q-Shu has signed Rocket Lab to do eleven launches total, so expect four more launches next year.
In 2025 Rocket Lab also completed three launches of its HASTE version of Election, which is designed to do suborbital hypersonic tests for the Pentagon. If we count these, the company has completed 21 launches in 2025. And even if we don’t count these suborbital launches, Rocket Lab has now launched more times than any other private company, except for SpaceX.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
168 SpaceX
85 China
18 Rocket Lab (a new record)
15 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 142.
Rocket Lab tonight successfully placed into orbit a set of Space Force technology test satellites dubbed DISKSat, its Electron rocket lifting off from Wallops Island in Virginia.
DISKSat is a new standard satellite design, shaped like a flat disk about a yard across and developed by the Aerospace Corporation. The idea is that these disk-shaped satellites will more efficiently fit payload into the standard cylindrical fairings used by rockets. This mission includes four that will be deployed in low Earth orbit, but during the mission will also test operation in much lower orbits than satellites normally fly. I suspect the flat design reduces the atmospheric drag at those low orbits, thus allowing the satellite to remain in orbit for longer time periods.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
168 SpaceX
84 China
17 Rocket Lab (a new record)
15 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 140.
Now liberty is enlightening the solar system!
Two American companies today successfully completed launches from opposite sides of the globe, and in doing so set a new global benchmark for rocket launches in a single year.
First, Rocket Lab placed a Japanese technology test smallsat into orbit, its Electron rocket taking off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. The satelliite, dubbed Raise-4, was built by Japan’s space agency JAXA and carries eight different experimental payloads from a variety of academic and industry entities, including a test of a new solar sail design.
SpaceX then followed, launching another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its 9th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
165 SpaceX (a new record)
83 China
16 Rocket Lab (a new record)
15 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 165 to 136.
More significantly, with these two launches the total number of successful orbital launches in 2025 has now exceeded 300, for a present total of 301. To put the spectacular nature of this number in perspective, until 2020 it was rare for the world to exceed 100 launches in a year, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. Most often, the total each year ranged between 50 to 80 launches.
Those numbers are now history, and it has been competition and freedom that has made all the difference.
» Read more
Click for original image.
The two twin Escapade Mars orbiters, built by Rocket Lab, that were launched last week by Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket have both successfully activated and tested their optical and infrared cameras.
The optical picture to the right, reduced to post here, shows the side of one solar panel on one of the orbiters.
The images prove the cameras are working well. The visible-light image also suggests that the spacecraft should have the sensitivity to image Martian aurora from orbit. The infrared camera will be used at Mars to better understand how materials on the surface heat up and cool down during Mars’ day-night cycle and over the planet’s seasons.
The second ESCAPADE spacecraft also successfully took its first photos, but it was targeted toward deep space, so the images were simply black.
The NASA press release did not explain why the second spacecraft’s camera was pointed in that manner. One would think the engineers would want it to look at the spacecraft in order to test its pointing and resolution. It could be it is placed in this manner and cannot be changed, or it could be there is a problem not mentioned by the release.
The two spacecraft are taking a different path to Mars than normal. Both will remain as Lagrange Point 2, a million miles from Earth until November 2026, when they will then be sent back towards Earth to slingshot past to arrive at Mars in September 2027. This plan allowed the spacecraft to be launched with greater flexibility, rather than be tied to the launch windows that occur every two years that all other Mars probes have used.
Rocket Lab today set new annual launch record for the company, quickly scheduling and launching a payload for a “confidential commercial customer”, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the company’s two launchpads in New Zealand.
This was the 15th orbital launch by Rocket Lab in 2025, beating the record of 14 the company set in 2025. Rocket Lab has also launched its HASTE suborbital version of Electron three times, so the company has actually completed the equivalent of 18 Electron launches this year, though three were not intended to reach orbit.
What made this launch unusual is that it was not announced in advance, and took place suddenly without revealing the customer. It is likely the customer was flying a classified military payload. UPDATE on November 26, 2025: That customer was actually the commercial imagery company BlackSky, launching another one of its satellites for its constellation used by both the military and the public. The company did not explain why it wished its identity hidden during the launch.)
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
151 SpaceX
71 China
15 Rocket Lab (a new record)
13 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 151 to 119.
Artist’s rendering of Neutron’s first stage fairings opening
to deploy the payload with the second stage engine.
Despite a concerted effort in the past year to achieve the first launch of its new reusable larger Neutron rocket before the end of 2025, Rocket Lab this week revealed that the company is now targeting a 2026 launch instead.
Sir Peter Beck, the CEO of Rocket Lab, announced the shift in plans during the third quarter earnings call with investors on Nov. 10. He said that the company’s goal is to get the rocket out to Launch Complex 3 at the Virginia Spaceport Authority’s (VSA) Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) within the first quarter of 2026 “with first launch thereafter.”
“As always, this is a rocket program that’s been completed at a pace and a cost that nobody has achieved before and the financial and long-term impacts are insignificant to take a little bit more time to get it right,” Beck told investors on the call.
During the call officials also made clear that there would be no attempt to recover the first stage on that first flight, as the landing barge won’t be ready by then. It hopes a landing attempt will occur on the second flight.
Finally, officials revealed that the company has spent a bit more to develop Neutron then the originally planned cost of between $250 to $300 million. Right now it expects to spend about $360 million by the end of 2025.
This delay or the increased cost are relatively inconsequential when looked at in context. Rocket Lab had only started this project in 2021. To create a new rocket in less than five years for only about a quarter of a billion dollars is quite unprecedented.
