As Rocket Lab prepares for its first fully-commercial rocket launch from Mahia, the aerospace company has taken another step closer to being ready to put a series of small satellites into orbit for NASA.
Rocket Lab says it has performed a successful fit check of the CubeSat dispensers for the NASA Venture Class Launch of its Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) XIX mission, which will put a total 12 mini CubeSats into orbit.
A Rocket lab spokeswoman said those would include the Shields-1 payload from NASA's Langley Research Center, which would focus on studying the harmful effects of harsh radiation environments to spacecraft.
"The NASA Langley Research Center Shields CubeSat initiative was created to enable lower cost access to space for materials durability experiments, and to foster a pathway for both emerging and commercial-off-the-shelf radiation shielding technologies to gain spaceflight heritage in a relevant environment."
The launch would also include an RSat payload from the US Naval Academy.