Rocket Lab prepares Electron's 100th flight with Japanese radar satellite

Rocket Lab is preparing for Electron's 100th flight. The mission, named “The Mountain God Rises”, is scheduled to lift off on Friday, November 14, at 6:30 p.m. New Zealand time — 2:30 a.m. in Brasília, 5:30 a.m. UTC — from Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula. On board is a single QPS-SAR radar-imaging satellite for iQPS, a Japanese company, bound for a 575 km low Earth orbit.

If it flies as planned, Electron will reach 100 launches faster than any other commercially developed rocket, according to the company. The two-stage small launcher has been flying since May 2017 and has 99 flights to date, with 95 successes and 4 failures. It will also be Rocket Lab's 21st mission of 2026 and its 11th dedicated iQPS mission since 2023.

What is going to space

The QPS-SAR satellite will expand iQPS' synthetic aperture radar constellation, used to produce high-resolution, near-real-time imagery of Earth, including at night and through clouds. The planned orbit has an inclination of 42 degrees. The previous flight, Electron's 99th flight, on November 2, carried the WADATSUMI-II satellite, also for iQPS, to the same constellation.

How to watch

Rocket Lab will stream the launch live on its YouTube channel, with coverage starting at 5:30 p.m. New Zealand time (1:30 a.m. in Brasília). The date is “no earlier than” (NET): weather, range availability and technical checks can still delay the attempt.

Sources

Featured image: Rocket Lab's Electron rocket at launch (NASA Kennedy Space Center / Rocket Lab, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain).

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By Muse