Rocket Lab has a paying customer for its medium-lift Neutron rocket, the company announced during its Q3 earnings call yesterday.
News of the multi-launch contract with a confidential commercial satellite constellation operator caps off another strong quarter for the company in a record-setting year.
Its small-lift Electron rocket launched for the 50th time in June, reaching that milestone faster than any other commercial rocket. Electron has already launched 12 times this year, setting a company record, with three to six more launches expected before January.
Now the company is scaling up its ambitions to take heavier payloads to orbit and turn a profit in the process.
Splitting the atom: Once operational, the Neutron rocket, which was designed with a focus on reusability, will be capable of taking 13,000 kg to LEO.
“Reusability for Neutron is just so fundamentally baked into the design from day one that it’s not something that we’re going to skip into later. It’s very, very much front of mind at all times,” CEO Sir Peter Beck told Payload.
Neutron is also expected to bring the company into profitability. “You can see from the amount of expenditure that [we] reported…it’s all going to R&D. The moment you start throwing customers at that, it flips,” Beck said.
Neutron launches currently sell for an average price of $50-55M, with a projected gross margin similar to Electron of 40-50%, according to Beck.
The rocket is expected to complete a test launch in 2025, and fly three missions in 2026. If that timeline holds, Neutron could compete for the DoD’s National Security Space Launch Lane 1 program, which is offering launchers a total of $5.6B over five years.
$$$: Rocket Lab also announced $105M in revenue for Q3, a 55% YoY increase, with about $1.05B in revenue backlog—approximately 50% of which is expected to be realized in the next 12 months, according to CFO Adam Spice.
While the company is best known for its launch capabilities, the core of the business’s financial success is driven by its space systems segment, which posted $83.9M in revenues during the quarter.
