{"id":22119,"date":"2025-06-28T15:25:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T15:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22119\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T15:25:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T15:25:13","slug":"rocket-lab-launches-second-electron-within-48-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22119\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocket Lab launches second Electron within 48 hours"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 A Rocket Lab Electron placed an undisclosed satellite into orbit June 28 on the company\u2019s second launch within 48 hours and fourth this month.<\/p>\n<p>The Electron lifted off from Rocket Lab\u2019s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 3:08 a.m. Eastern. The rocket\u2019s kick stage deployed its payload into a 650-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit less than an hour later.<\/p>\n<p>Rocket Lab did not disclose any details about the payload beyond its orbit, stating that it was for a confidential customer. That customer signed a contract less than four months ago for this launch as well as a second mission scheduled before the end of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Speculation about the identity of the customer has focused on EchoStar. That company is deploying a constellation of smallsats called Lyra for Internet of Things services, having launched two on SpaceX Transporter missions earlier this year. An illustration of a satellite in the mission patch for this Electron launch is similar to previously released illustrations of Lyra satellites.<\/p>\n<p>The launch was the second Electron mission in less than 48 hours, after <a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/rocket-lab-launches-hawkeye-360-satellites\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an Electron launch from the other pad at Launch Complex 1 June 26 placing four HawkEye 360 satellites into orbit<\/a>. That is the shortest turnaround time to date between launches at that site.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe future of space is built on proven performance, and Electron continues to deliver against a stacked launch manifest this year,\u201d Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in a statement after the launch.<\/p>\n<p>This was also the fourth launch in June for Electron, a tally that includes <a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/rocket-lab-launches-blacksky-satellite\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a June 2 launch of a BlackSky imaging satellite<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/electron-launches-third-iqps-satellite-in-three-months\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a June 11 launch of a radar imaging satellite<\/a> for Japanese company iQPS. Rocket Lab has performed 10 Electron launches this year, and company executives previously stated they expect to conduct more than 20 launches in 2025.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/author\/jeff-foust\/\" rel=\"author noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-perfmatters-preload=\"\" width=\"80\" height=\"80\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/jeff_foust-1-150x150.jpg\" class=\"avatar avatar-80 photo wp-post-image\" alt=\"\" \/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJeff Foust writes about space policy, commercial space, and related topics for SpaceNews.&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<br \/>\nHe earned a Ph.D. in planetary sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor\u2019s degree with honors in geophysics and planetary science&#8230;\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"author-link\" href=\"https:\/\/spacenews.com\/author\/jeff-foust\/\" rel=\"author noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Jeff Foust\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON \u2014 A Rocket Lab Electron placed an undisclosed satellite into orbit June 28 on the company\u2019s second&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[15229,15232,159,16988,783,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-22119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-electron","9":"tag-rocket-lab","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-sn","12":"tag-space","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}