Rocket Lab Picks Dec. 7 for First US Electron Rocket Launch

The US space company that’s staged all its liftoffs from New Zealand has set a date set for its first launch on American soil. Rocket Lab announced(Opens in a new window) on Wednesday that it plans to fly an Electron rocket(Opens in a new window) from its facility at Wallops Island, Va., during a launch window that opens on Dec. 7. 

That mission–named “Virginia is for Launch Lovers” in a nod to the state’s tourism slogan(Opens in a new window)–will deliver a set of radio-frequency Earth-observation satellites from HawkEye 360(Opens in a new window), a Herndon, Va., geoanalytics provider.

Rocket Lab, founded in New Zealand in 2006 but now based in Long Beach, Calif., has built a growing small-satellite delivery business since Electron first launched(Opens in a new window) (but failed to reach orbit) from New Zealand’s North Island in 2017.

That two-stage rocket–built with a carbon-composite structure and capable of lofting 661 pounds to low Earth orbit–has delivered 152 satellites(Opens in a new window) so far. The last mission was for Sweden’s space agency and counted as the company’s ninth in 2022, putting Electron in second place(Opens in a new window) in the West after SpaceX’s Falcon 9 (50 launches this year, more than any other country) and fourth worldwide after China’s Long March 2 series (20 launches) and Russia’s Soyuz (17).

Rocket Lab has been working to make Electron’s first stage reusable by catching it with a cable spooled out from a cargo helicopter as that booster descends under a parachute. 

In a first test in May, a Sikorsky S-92 helicopter briefly snagged the Electron stage(Opens in a new window) before the pilots cut it free after deciding that its loads didn’t match predictions. Rocket Lab planned another catch attempt for last week’s launch, but waved it off after the descending stage lost telemetry. Both times, a Rocket Lab ship fished the stage out of the ocean for inspection. 

In 2018, the company picked Wallops Island(Opens in a new window) for its U.S. launch facility; in February, it announced that it would build and fly its upcoming, partly reusable and larger Neutron rocket there. Wallops hosts suborbital launches for NASA as well as International Space Station cargo deliveries via Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which most recently sent a Cygnus cargo craft to the ISS in an early Wednesday morning launch(Opens in a new window).