Rocket Lab Successfully Launches Electron Rocket With Busy Year Ahead
Rocket Lab's Electron rocket continued its successful launch history this week by inserting the BlackSky Gen-3 satellite into a low-Earth-orbit target, 292 miles above the Earth. This is the seventh successful launch Electron has made this year, but the schedule is only going to accelerate from here. There are already a further 14 launches planned for the rest of 2025, with two more slated for 2026, and a further 10 within a 2025-2027 launch window.
Rocket Lab has been developing its Electron rocket design for over a decade and has been successfully launching payloads for customers since the end of 2018. Although the industry has been dominated by larger rocket developers, like SpaceX, Rocket Lab has continually championed the smaller rocket industry. In April, it argued that there was a value in being able to control the orbital insertion angle, instead of just ride-sharing on someone else's payload in a larger rocket design, like a Falcon 9, or future Starship.
Credit: Rocket Lab
And Electron keeps proving the management right. Rocket Lab is ramping up its launch schedule to show it can be a responsive and prolific launch vehicle operator. The last Electron launch was a mere two weeks previously on May 17. It also managed three launches in March from the same launch site complex in Mahia, New Zealand.
The BlackSky AI-surveillance satellite is the seventh of more than 20 planned launches this year. The launches are spread across a few different companies, mostly launching satellites into low Earth orbit. However, in 2025 alone it will also complete a joint mission with MIT to send an atmospheric probe to Venus and complete a contract for the U.S. Space Force to show its responsiveness to rapid launch requirements.
Most of the upcoming launches will be from the same New Zealand-based launch complex, though a couple are slated to launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia.
Building on these successes, Rocket Lab plans to introduce its larger Neutron rocket before the end of 2025. It will have a payload up to 25 times that of Electron, and a reusable first stage, in a similar fashion to SpaceX's Falcon 9—though Falcon 9 can still carry substantially more cargo into orbit. This will represent Rocket Lab stepping into the medium payload space, one that the company feels will complement its existing small payload launch vehicle.
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The move, which dealt a blow to Boeing's hopes of getting the vehicle certified for regular space travel, would also free up a docking port at the station for the spacecraft now tasked with bringing Wilmore and Williams back. Under NASA's plan, the space agency selected a SpaceX Dragon bound the following month for the space station to transport Williams and Wilmore home. And to avoid having the station be understaffed, NASA opted to keep Williams and Wilmore at the station a few extra months rather than launch an emergency mission to return them to Earth. Empty Starliner undocks, lands in New Mexico The empty Boeing Starliner then undocked Sept. 6 and made its way back to Earth for a parachute-assisted landing in the New Mexico desert. At the time, Boeing had plenty of work ahead to prepare the vehicle for routine spaceflight – including more ground tests and potential modifications to remedy its propulsion system woes. Starliner's future as a second operational vehicle for NASA to transport crews and cargo to the space station remains unclear, though the space agency appears to still be working with Boeing to make the vehicle operational. SpaceX Crew-9 mission reaches ISS On Sept. 28, 2024, NASA launched the SpaceX Crew-9 mission as planned, but with one crucial change: Just two astronauts, Nick Hague of NASA and Russian cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, headed to the space station instead of four to leave two empty seats on their vehicle reserved for Wilmore and Williams. The pair arrived a day after getting off the ground on a spacecraft. But Wilmore and Williams didn't return with them right away. Instead, the Starliner astronauts were folded into the Crew-9 mission, and Williams even became commander of Expedition 72 – overseeing all of the spacefarers living and working at the space station. The plan then became Williams and Wilmore to return with Crew-9 in 2025 once Hague and Gorbunov completed their mission. Suni Williams makes history on spacewalk If it weren't for the extended mission, Williams would not have been able to set a record Jan. 30 during her ninth-ever spacewalk. After she and Wilmore spent more than six hours venturing outside the space station, Williams has now spent a cumulative 62 hours and 6 minutes in the vacuum of space – more than any other woman in the world. Only three other people in the world have spent more cumulative time on spacewalks than Williams. President Donald Trump, Elon Musk weigh in on Starliner saga After taking office in January, President Donald Trump weighed in several times on the Starliner mission, the delay of which he blamed on the Biden administration. He and billionaire ally Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, began characterizing the vehicle's crew as being "abandoned" or "stuck" in space – an assertion Wilmore and Williams have oft refuted. Trump also claimed that it was he who "authorized" Musk to retrieve the astronauts, despite the return plan being in place before he was elected. However, Trump did appear to have had an influence over NASA's decision to accelerate by about two weeks the launch of a mission that replaced Crew-9. SpaceX Crew-10 launches for International Space Station That mission, unsurprisingly known as Crew-10, launched March 14 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Crew-10 included a full contingent of four spacefarers, including mission commander Anne McClain of NASA, NASA pilot Nichole Ayers and two mission specialists from other space agencies: Japanese astronaut Takuya Onishi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa) and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. After more than 28 hours traveling through orbit, Crew-10 reached the space station late March 15 – a critical step in setting the stage for Wilmore and Williams to embark on their long-awaited return trip. Starliner astronauts undock with Crew-9 Before the outgoing astronauts departed the station, they spent a few days helping the new arrivals familiarize themselves with the orbital laboratory and station operations during a handover period. Wilmore and Williams then boarded the Dragon with Hague and Gorbunov and undocked March 18 from the ISS's Harmony module, a port and passageway onto the station. Dragon carrying Starliner crew, Crew-9 lands off Florida coast About 17 hours later, the SpaceX Dragon vehicle – charred from its journey through Earth's atmosphere – deployed parachutes for a dramatic water landing March 19 off the coast of Florida. SpaceX teams then raced to retrieve the floating spacecraft and its crew of four, helping secure the Dragon and hoist it onto a recovery vessel. Once the Dragon was firmly in place on the ship's main deck, teams cut into the vehicle's side hatch to help Williams, Wilmore, Hague and Gorbunov exit. As commentators explained during NASA's livestream, the astronauts were placed onto stretchers – standard protocol after long-duration spaceflights – and taken to receive medical examinations. Once cleared, the four astronauts were taken on a short helicopter ride to board an airplane for a flight to NASA's headquarters in Houston, where they began their recovery. Eric Lagatta is the Space Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach him at elagatta@
