Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab has made a name for itself in short space of time by focusing on highly frequent launches of small satellites, but now the space startup believes it has bigger fish to fry, introducing a larger rocket named Neutron.

Startup Rocket Lab has joined SpaceX and Blue Origin in the world of rocket recovery, today bringing its Electron booster back down to Earth for the first time ever as part of its landmark “Return to Sender” mission.

Rocket Lab is set to take an important step forward in its mission to reuse parts of its Electron booster, announcing that it will make its first attempt to recover the rocket’s first stage during a mission scheduled for later this month.

Rocket Lab has plans for a private mission to Venus in 2023. New Atlas spoke with the company’s CEO Peter Beck about the road ahead, his long-time fascination with our nearest planetary neighbor and the machinery that he plans to use to explore

Rocket Lab made a successful return to service by launching a customer’s satellite into orbit earlier this week, but that wasn’t the only cause for celebration, with the team also deploying its own Photon satellite as part of the same flight.

A booster failure in early July threatened to derail Rocket Lab's momentum, but the company appears to have taken the setback in its stride with a successful return to the launchpad today that saw it deliver a 100-kg satellite into orbit.

Rocket Lab experienced a notable hiccup in early July, when one of its Electron boosters was lost on its way to orbit, along with the seven satellites onboard. The company now claims to have pinpointed the source of the problem.

Rocket Lab has made some impressive gains lately as a relatively young space startup focused on launching small satellites to orbit, but the latest outing of its Electron booster hasn’t quite gone to plan, ending in the "safe loss" of the vehicle.

Rocket Lab is looking to join the rocket recycling party by collecting the first stage of its Electron launch vehicle in midair using a helicopter, a method that it has now successfully demonstrated over the open ocean in New Zealand.

Rocket Lab announced today at the International Astronautical Congress in Washinton DC that it is expanding its services to deliver small satellites and other payloads into medium, geostationary, and even lunar orbits as soon as late 2020.

SpaceX singlehandedly changed the game when it comes to rocket recycling, but it might soon have some company with competitor Rocket Lab today announcing a reusability program of its own.​

​​Following a year with mixed results, 2019 is shaping up as quite a success story for US space startup Rocket Lab. The company has backed up a successful satellite launch for DARPA in March with another for the US Air Force.