WALLOPS ISLAND, Virginia— As Rocket Lab prepares to roll out its new Neutron rocket as a fresh competitor for military and commercial missions, the firm on Thursday unveiled the launch complex from which the vehicle will fly – possibly by the end of the year.
Housed within the Virginia Space Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Wallops Island, the facility, dubbed Launch Complex 3, will support testing, launch and return missions for the reusable rocket — the largest vehicle to ever fly from the spaceport.
“As we prepare for our next-generation rocket, it makes sense that we have a world-class launch facility and landing facility,” Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said at the event, which was attended by several Virginian politicians, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). “That high cadence for launch vehicle Neutron will expand indigenous capability and enable the United States to quickly and reliably reach the International Space Station, Earth orbit, the moon and beyond.”
The company sees Neutron as a contender to help ease the bottleneck in demand from both commercial and military customers for a ride to space. Today, that demand is in large part being met by a single provider in the medium-lift market, Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
The firm has its sights on eventually supporting the Defense Department’s most important and complex national security missions. Today, only SpaceX and United Launch Alliance are eligible to launch those missions, though Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will join them once its New Glenn vehicle meets all of its certification requirements.
Last May, the U.S. Space Force brought Rocket Lab into the fold of its multibillion-dollar National Security Space Launch program, which allows the firm to offer the Neutron to fly a less-strenuous slate of military missions.
But first, Neutron needs to take flight at all. Beck has said on several occasions that while Rocket Lab believes its plan to launch this year is within reach, the schedule is aggressive with no margin for error.
Speaking with reporters at the launch site, Beck said the company has some key testing in the coming months to qualify key stages of the rocket, which will give it a better idea of whether it can meet that 2025 timeline.
“Nobody’s waving the white flag here until the last hour of the last day,” he said.
Following the first launch this year, the company is eyeing three more next year and five the following — eventually building its cadence to one flight per month. Asked how soon the firm expects to be competing directly with SpaceX, Beck said Rocket Lab is focused on helping meet demand in the market, not on a particular competitor.
“We service the opportunities that are in front of us, sort of run our own race,” he said. “I don’t wake up every morning going, ‘How am I going to compete with Elon?’ We see this opportunity here and we’re going to go after it and do a good job.”
The path forward
As Rocket Lab prepares for Neutron’s first flight, progress at its Virginia launch site in the coming weeks will be crucial.
Shaun D’Mello, a company vice president overseeing Neutron, told reporters that the rocket’s hardware is starting to be delivered by boat to a barge at the facility, and the company expects to have the full rocket on site by November. Much of the vehicle’s assembly is happening at a Rocket Lab facility in Middle River, Maryland, so the final mating at the site should be straightforward, he said.
“Our second stage is already on a boat on its way,” he said. “So, we’ll soon see a lot of hardware coming together here. A lot of the key integration will take place up there, so it’ll be a just-in-time arrival of hardware at Wallops before we put it on the pad.”
Once the rocket is on site and integrated, the firm will start static-fire testing, where engineers will validate the engine’s performance and ensure the system is ready for launch.
In parallel with hardware arrivals, Rocket Lab’s focus right now is in two key areas: readiness for Neutron’s ascent mission and the performance of its propulsion system.
While the rocket will eventually be fully reusable, the company is aiming for a controlled “splash-down” landing after its first flight. D’Mello said the firm’s experience with its high-cadence Electron rocket — which flies smaller satellites from Wallops Island and the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand — has prepared it for the launch itself, but the rocket’s landing is a new challenge.
“Most of the engineering team right now is spending time landing the rocket and not launching because we know how to get to orbit,” he said.
On the propulsion system, dubbed Archimedes, D’Mello said the company isn’t seeing any showstoppers but noted that this phase of testing is difficult.
“It’s a physics problem at the end of the day, rocket engines, so we’re holding the course and seeing some great performance,” he said. “Other than the fact that rockets are hard, there’s nothing out of the ordinary. … We’re not too particularly concerned about any specific aspect. It all just needs to come together.”
Room to grow
As Rocket Lab expands Neutron and Electron operations in the coming years, D’Mello and Beck said they’re looking forward to seeing the facility at Wallops Island grow with them.
Officials representing the spaceport and NASA as well as state and local politicians said this week that Neutron’s success is a key part of their strategy for making Wallops a bigger player in commercial and military launch.
Speaking Thursday during the Rocket Lab event, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said the state’s vision is for the launch facility to one day be “the most vibrant space industry complex in America.”
“In order to lead, it requires us to have an ecosystem that can fulfill not just the current requirements but the future requirements,” Youngkin said.
Rocket Lab officials said that while they considered more traditional medium and heavy-lift facilities like Cape Canaveral Space Force Base in Florida, space is tight at those venues. Expanding their operations at Wallops offered a chance for the company to be a priority tenant and have a better chance at meeting its high-cadence launch targets.
“The Cape is an amazing place,” Beck said. “But it’s busy. It’s only getting busier.”
The facilities at Wallops are sufficient for Rocket Lab’s current operations, but as the company looks to the future, with an eye toward supporting human spaceflight, it will require more infrastructure, including deep-water ports.
“Right now, we have the minimum viable equipment that we need to get on and start ramping up,” he said. “As that ramps and we’re successful and the state’s successful, then we’ll all continue to invest in that infrastructure.”
/ Space
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