The US-New Zealand small launcher operator, Rocket Lab, has received a launch booking by launch arranger Spaceflight for one of its Electron small rocket launches. The Spaceflight firm already has a launch booking for its Sherpa deployment spacecraft which, in turn, will be carrying several cubesat class spacecraft on their “rideshare” delivery to orbit contracts with Spaceflight.
This flight has been delayed several months by difficulties in the Falcon 9 launch programme following some technical failures. However, this delay has caused Spaceflight to realise it had need to take out a booking for a smaller launch vehicle. The Electron rocket is an entirely carbon-composite vehicle that is designed to carry payloads of 225 kg to an elliptical orbit and up to 150 kg to a nominal 500 km sun-synchronous low earth orbit.
Spaceflight has arranged the launches more than 100 satellites to date from a variety of launch vehicles including PSLV, Dnepr, Antares, Cygnus, Soyuz and others.