{"id":551664,"date":"2025-11-05T23:04:18","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/551664\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T23:04:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:04:18","slug":"rocket-lab-launches-private-earth-observing-radar-satellite-to-orbit-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/551664\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocket Lab launches private Earth-observing radar satellite to orbit (video)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rocket Lab launched its sixth mission for the Japanese Earth-imaging company iQPS this afternoon (Nov. 5) from its seaside pad in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

An Electron<\/a> rocket carrying the QPS-SAR-14 satellite<\/a>, nicknamed Yachihoko-I, lifted off from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand site today at 2:51 p.m. EST (1951 GMT; 8:51 a.m. on Nov. 6. local New Zealand time).<\/p>\n

The Electron’s “kick stage” deployed Yachihoko-I as planned<\/a> today, ejecting it into a circular, 357-mile-high (575 kilometers) orbit about 50 minutes after launch.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

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The view from the second stage of a Rocket Lab Electron rocket during its Nov. 5, 2025 launch, which lofted an Earth-observing satellite for the Japanese company iQPS. The Electron’s first stage is visible falling back to Earth in the distance. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)<\/p>\n

“This satellite will join the rest of the QPS-SAR constellation in providing high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images and Earth monitoring services globally,” Rocket Lab<\/a> wrote in a mission description<\/a>. “iQPS aims to build a constellation of 36 SAR satellites that will provide near-real-time images of Earth every 10 minutes.”<\/p>\n

Yachihoko-I will be the 13th (not 14th, as it name implies) iQPS satellite to reach orbit to date. Seven members of the growing constellation have flown atop non-Electron rockets to date \u2014 India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, Japan’s Epsilon and SpaceX’s Falcon 9<\/a>, to be specific.<\/p>\n

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\"a\n<\/p>\n

A Rocket Lab Electron rocket launches the “Nation God Navigates” mission for Japanese Earth-observing company iQPS from New Zealand on Nov. 5, 2025. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)<\/p>\n

Yachihoko-I takes its name from the Japanese god of nation-building, according to Rocket Lab. That explains the moniker the company gave to today’s mission: “The Nation God Navigates.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Today’s launch was the 16th of 2025 for Rocket Lab and the company’s 74th overall to date. The vast majority of these have been conducted by the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron. Rocket Lab also operates a suborbital version of the vehicle known as HASTE<\/a> (“Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron”), which has flown five times since debuting in June 2023.<\/p>\n

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: <\/strong>This story was updated at 3 p.m. ET on Nov. 5 with news of successful liftoff, then again at 3:58 p.m. ET with news of successful satellite deployment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rocket Lab launched its sixth mission for the Japanese Earth-imaging company iQPS this afternoon (Nov. 5) from its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3844],"tags":[70,413,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-551664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-space","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115499596423462260","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}