Rocket Lab celebrates reaching 40

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

After successfully launching its latest rocket mission earlier this week, Rocket Lab yesterday said it would launch again in a week.

The “We Love the Nightlife” mission is scheduled to launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 at Māhia for American space tech company Capella Space (Capella), a leading provider of commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery.

“We Love the Nightlife” will be Rocket Lab’s third launch for Capella following the successful “Stronger Together” mission launched in March 2023 from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 in Virginia, USA, and the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Optical” mission in August 2020 from Launch Complex 1, which deployed the first satellite in Capella’s SAR constellation.

“We Love the Nightlife”will be the first of four new dedicated launches on Electron for Capella, announced in February 2023, to deploy Capella’s next-generation SAR Earth-imaging satellites called Acadia.

“Electron was the trusted launch vehicle for Capella’s first publicly available satellite when we launched their mission in 2020, so it’s an honour once again to be entrusted with launching the first of their next generation Acadia satellites,” Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Peter Beck said.

“Reaching 40 Electron launches is a wonderful milestone for our team members who have built the most reliable small launch vehicle in history and we’re delighted to share such a significant launch with our long-standing mission partner Capella.”

Capella’s satellites deliver high quality, high resolution SAR imagery capable of penetrating all weather conditions and capturing clear imagery 24-7, day and night, anywhere on Earth, delivered through Capella’s fully automated ordering and delivery platform.

All four upcoming Electron missions will launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1, each deploying a single Acadia satellite to a 640 km mid-inclination orbit, expanding the existing Capella Space SAR constellation and providing more rapid revisit across diverse regions around the Earth.

Each Capella Space satellite will also be supported by a Rocket Lab-manufactured Advanced Lightband: separation systems for each satellite to attach to and deploy from Electron once launched to orbit.