Rocket Lab
Every Cosmic Herald story on Rocket Lab — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
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Military Space
Space Force Adds Impulse Space and Relativity Federal to Its $5.6 Billion Launch Roster
Space Systems Command admitted Impulse Space and Relativity's Relativity Federal to NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 on July 7, growing the qualified-provider pool to seven and handing each a $5 million task order.
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Military Space
VICTUS HAZE: How a 16-Hour Launch and a 61-Hour Chase Just Rewrote the Rules of Space Warfare
Over the July 4th weekend, Rocket Lab launched a Space Force satellite in 16 hours 42 minutes, then True Anomaly's autonomous JACKAL-0004 found and imaged it in 61 hours — the first commercial orbital intercept in history.
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Military Space
Victus Haze: How the Space Force Just Proved It Can Hunt Satellites on Hours' Notice
Rocket Lab's Puma launched 16 hours after notice and, guided only by its own sensors, tracked down and photographed True Anomaly's orbiting Jackal-0004 satellite — a rehearsal for spotting adversary spacecraft with almost no warning.
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Commercial
Rocket Lab Buys Iridium for $8 Billion, Trading Rockets for a Working Satellite Network
Rocket Lab will acquire satellite operator Iridium in a cash-and-stock deal valuing it near $8 billion, buying 66 working satellites, rare L-band spectrum, and instant recurring revenue instead of building it all itself.
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Commercial
A Chinese Spaceplane Just Released an Object Into Orbit — and Commercial Trackers Caught It
Commercial space surveillance firms independently detected a Chinese spaceplane deploying an object in orbit, underscoring the growing clout of private-sector space domain awareness.
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Military Space
Rocket Lab Launches Victus Haze Satellite in Space Force's Most Ambitious Responsive Space Exercise Yet
Rocket Lab's Electron delivers a Space Force satellite for the Victus Haze exercise, testing whether the U.S. can rapidly deploy orbital assets when a crisis demands it.
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Commercial
China's Spark Space Bets on Electric-Pump Engines to Carve Out a Niche in the Small-Sat Launch Race
Two-year-old Hefei startup Spark Space has test-fired its Lieyan-2 kerosene-LOX engine and closed back-to-back funding rounds totaling over $14.8M, racing to debut its Jinhua-1 rocket by 2027.
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Commercial
The Upper Stage Problem: Why Reusable Second Stages Are Harder Than They Look
Recovering and reusing first stages was the revolution. But upper stages — which must survive orbital velocities and reentry — are a fundamentally harder problem, and the industry's three main bets are taking very different approaches.
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Commercial
Rocket Lab is building a reusable rocket. Why Neutron is harder than it looks.
Rocket Lab has built a successful small launch business on the back of its expendable Electron rocket. Now it's attempting something far more difficult: a medium-lift reusable launch vehicle called Neutron, aimed directly at SpaceX's market.
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Commercial
Rocket Lab's bid to challenge the Falcon 9 is down to a few months — and a few tests
Neutron, Rocket Lab's medium-lift, partially reusable rocket, is targeting its first flight in the last quarter of 2026. A tank failure earlier this year forced a redesign — but a fresh multi-launch deal shows customers are already betting on it.
