Rocket Lab ($RKLB) announced its largest launch contract to date yesterday: a $266M multi-launch agreement with SSC covering 12 suborbital launches, including the option for SSC to add six more.
To complete the mission, Rocket Lab will open up a new launch site—its fourth—at the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska (PSCA) in Kodiak. Launches are expected to begin no earlier than the end of this year.
Speed racer: The announcement is yet another example of the surge in launch demand from the DoD, specifically for missile defense testing.
During the Ukraine and Iran conflicts, the US has depleted much of its missile reserve. To replenish and upgrade the stockpile—and field new capabilities for projects like Golden Dome—the military needs to test a lot of hardware at high speeds.
Rocket Lab is working to position itself as the optimal partner to host these suborbital hypersonic test missions. In March, Rocket Lab won a $190M DoD contract for 20 hypersonic test flights using the company’s suborbital HASTE launch vehicle.
And opening a new site in Alaska will expand the pool of potential DoD test missions even further, the company says.
“Missile-defense testing needs to be affordable and high cadence. The capability to demonstrate it reliably, repeatably, on urgent timelines, and affordably…that is what sets Rocket Lab apart from everybody else in suborbital launch,” a spokesperson from Rocket Lab told Payload via email. “Establishing our fourth launch location in Alaska is about expanding that to a new location where we can keep serving key missions.”
North to the future: The decision to set up operations in Alaska, however, isn’t just a move to win more suborbital contracts—it’s part of a strategy to build up Rocket Lab’s overall launch cadence.
“Electron—and its suborbital variant, HASTE—use the same launch infrastructure, so once you’re operating in a strategic location like Alaska, it naturally opens the door to a much broader range of possibilities,” the spokesperson said.
The operations involved to set up the Kodiak launch site can be easily replicable in other geographies, the spokesperson added, “including allied nations looking for sovereign launch capability.”
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ORBES, a California startup building robotic spacecraft for in-orbit servicing missions, unveiled its first inspection satellite today—called Exo-ORB.
The robotic spacecraft is one of two models ORBES is building:
Meet ORBES: ORBES was founded in 2024 on the idea that large structures in space—data centers, commercial space stations, and other proposed projects with massive solar arrays—need a cheaper, more efficient maintenance option.
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