Follow us
Add us as a preferred source on Google
Newsletter
Subscribe to our newsletter
Rocket Lab just hit the century mark.
An Electron rocket topped with a private Japanese Earth-observing satellite lifted off from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand site on Saturday (Nov. 14) at 12:30 a.m. EST (0530 GMT; 6:30 p.m. local New Zealand time).
The mission, which Rocket Lab called “The Mountain God Rises,” was a big one: It marked the 100th launch to date for the California-based company.
The first stage of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket falls back to Earth during “The Mountain God Rises” mission on Nov. 14, 2026. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)
Rocket Lab launched for the first time in May 2017, sending the brand-new Electron up on a test flight from New Zealand. That effort failed, but Electron bounced back on its second-ever liftoff, delivering several cubesats to low Earth orbit (LEO) in January 2018.
In the years since, the 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron has become one of the most prolific and reliable rockets in the world, carrying small payloads to the final frontier for a variety of customers.
You may like
And it hit the century mark on Saturday in record-breaking fashion: No commercially developed rocket has gotten there faster, not even SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9, according to Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck.
“It’s an unprecedented milestone for a commercial small-lift orbital rocket, and a threshold rarely crossed in modern spaceflight,” Beck said on Monday (Nov. 9), during Rocket Lab’s third-quarter earnings call with investors. “But what matters most to us and our customers is that we have achieved a 96% reliability rate across 99 launches.”
Electron met the moment in style on Saturday morning, thanks to some fancy livery.
“Black rocket 🤝 Golden milestone. Electron is all dressed up for launch 100,” Rocket Lab said via X on Tuesday (Nov. 10), in a post that shared a photo of the specially painted first stage.
Not all of Rocket Lab’s missions have gone orbital, it should be noted: A suborbital variant of Electron known as HASTE, which customers use to test technologies in a hypersonic flight environment, has nine missions under its belt to date.
The Electron rocket that flew Rocket Lab’s 100th mission sported some special livery. (Image credit: Rocket Lab)
“The Mountain God Rises” was Rocket Lab’s 11th launch to date for the Tokyo-based company iQPS, which is building a constellation of three dozen synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites in LEO. And all went to plan on the mission: Electron’s upper “kick stage” deployed a single iQPS spacecraft 357 miles (575 kilometers) above Earth.
SAR satellites can see through cloud cover and image our planet at night as well as during the day, offering key advantages over spacecraft that are optimized to view in optical wavelengths.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 12:40 a.m. ET on Nov. 14 with news of successful liftoff, then again at 1:30 a.m. ET with news of satellite deployment.