Two Black Sky Missions to be Launched by Rocket Lab in November
Rocket Lab USA plans to launch two Black Sky missions on dedicated launches in November.
“The speed to space Electron provides our customers is unmatched in the dedicated small launch industry, and we’re thrilled to be delivering a launch service that provides assurance for BlackSky to scale their constellation and services with confidence.”
Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck.
A two-week launch window for Rocket Lab’s 22nd Electron launch will open November 11-24, 2021, while the 23rd Electron mission is targeted for lift-off during a two-week launch window that opens November 27. Both missions are scheduled to launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.
Each mission will deploy two Gen-2 satellites for BlackSky in a rapid expansion of the geospatial and global monitoring company’s low Earth orbit constellation. These two dedicated missions are part of a multi-launch agreement signed between Rocket Lab and Spaceflight Inc., for BlackSky earlier this year, and precede a third dedicated mission that will follow to deploy two additional BlackSky Gen-2 satellites. Together, these launches - along with a successfully deployed Gen-2 satellite on Rocket Lab’s “They Go Up So Fast” rideshare mission in March this year - represent the largest number of satellites BlackSky has committed to a single launch provider to date.
The back-to-back launch of these two dedicated Black Sky missions supports that company’s aggressive scaling of its high-resolution Earth-imaging constellation to bolster its delivery of analytics and insights to industries including transportation, infrastructure, land use, defense, supply chain management, and humanitarian aid.
“The speed to space Electron provides our customers is unmatched in the dedicated small launch industry, and we’re thrilled to be delivering a launch service that provides assurance for BlackSky to scale their constellation and services with confidence,” said Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck.
Black Sky is a customer of Spaceflight Inc.
(Source: Rocket Lab USA news release. Image from file)