Latest launch-contract win suggests Rocket Lab now considered highly reliable

Enlarge / An Electron rocket lifts off in 2019. (credit: Sam Toms/Rocket Lab)

Rocket Lab announced late Tuesday that it had signed another customer to its launch manifest for 2020, a Japanese company named Synspective. Rocket Lab will launch the company's synthetic-aperture-radar satellite (named StriX-I) late this year from its facility in New Zealand.

"We are very pleased to work with Rocket Lab, a pioneer in rocket ventures," the founder and chief executive of Synspective, Motoyuki Arai, said in a news release. "We are also grateful for their flexibility in accepting our requests on the satellite's orbit and launch period."

This was all standard enough. The 150kg StriX-I satellite is near the top end of Electron's capability, but the booster can loft that much mass to Sun-synchronous orbit. To date, the heaviest payload launched by Electron is a 185kg satellite for the Air Force, into a 500km orbit last year.

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