Story · Alaska
Space Force Awards Rocket Lab $266 Million for Suborbital Launches from Alaska
The U.S. Space Force has awarded Rocket Lab a $266 million contract to conduct 12 suborbital missions over three years, with most launches occurring from a new pad at the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska. This is Rocket Lab's largest-ever launch deal and includes options for six additional missions. The launches will support missile defense and likely utilize the HASTE variant of the Electron rocket for hypersonic testing. The contract, running through 2028, is part of the Space Force's Rocket System Launch Program and aims to ease congestion at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg by offloading smaller launches to commercial spaceports. Rocket Lab is also developing a larger rocket, Neutron, for medium- and heavy-class missions.
Editorial responsibility
- No named human review is recorded for this page.
- Reports are grouped by semantic similarity and deterministic rules. Language models may assist titles, summaries, translation and cross-source analysis; the page itself is projected from evidence records.
- Current automated evidence projection