Rocket Lab has managed to set a very unusual achievement. It performed two launches from two different hemispheres less than 24 hours apart.
The first one was the HASTE suborbital rocket. It was launched from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport located on the territory of Wallops Island in the state of Virginia.
HASTE is based on the Electron rocket and can take up to 700 kg of cargo. It is designed for hypersonic testing. The rocket puts the payload on a suborbital trajectory, providing acceleration to hypersonic speeds using special fairings and a modified upper stage. The mission was a success. Since the U.S. Department of Defense was the customer of the mission, Rocket Lab did not provide any information about the payload, as well as data on the rocket’s speed and maximum altitude.
21 hours and 55 minutes after that, Rocket Lab launched the Ice AIS Baby mission. Within its framework, the Electron rocket launched from the spaceport on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula successfully placed five Kinéis satellites into low Earth orbit at an altitude of 643 kilometers. The vehicles are part of a constellation designed to identify the location of any connected object anywhere in the world. It provides data transmission to users in near real-time, with low bitrate and very low power consumption.
This mission was Rocket Lab’s 14th space mission in 2024 and 56th launch overall. Thanks to its success, the company also updated its own record for the shortest time between two launches of its rockets.
Rocket Lab is set to reveal its new Neutron rocket as early as next year. It is a medium-class carrier capable of carrying up to 13 tons of cargo into low orbit and has a reusable first stage. Rocket Lab is using one of the largest 3D printers in the world to print components of the new rocket.
