HOUSTON — Rocket Lab says the first launch of its Neutron rocket remains planned for 2025 after a recent research report concluded it could slip to as late as 2027.
In a Feb. 27 earnings call, Rocket Lab executives said they were making good progress on Neutron, a medium-lift reusable launch vehicle, and its launch site at Wallops Island, Virginia, with a first launch expected in the second half of the year.
“This year is the year of Neutron. We look forward to unlocking the medium launch bottleneck by bringing Neutron to the pad,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said on the call, later calling Neutron “our monopoly breaker to unlock the bottleneck of medium launch.”
He outlined progress on Neutron and the Launch Complex 3 site at Wallops, and also announced that Rocket Lab had purchased a barge that will serve as a landing platform for the vehicle. The vessel, rechristened “Return on Investment,” is about 120 meters long and will be converted into a landing platform for missions starting in 2026. Beck noted that the first Neutron launch will not attempt a landing on a ship but instead perform a “soft splashdown” in the ocean.
The update on Neutron comes after a Feb. 25 report by Bleecker Street Research that argued that Neutron was facing significant delays based on the public information about the progress on the vehicle and Launch Complex 3, as well as interviews with industry officials. It concluded that the company still had major work to do on Neutron, including its Archimedes engines, while work at Wallops faced infrastructure challenges, such as difficulties transporting Neutron components.
“While the company has stuck to plans to conduct a test launch of Neutron in mid-2025, with 3 commercial launches in 2026 and 5 in 2027, regulatory filings and our interviews with industry experts indicate that a first launch of Neutron isn’t possible until mid-2026 at the earliest,” the report stated, noting that a first launch could slip to mid-2027.
Rocket Lab did not discuss the report in the earnings call but appeared to make an indirect reference to it. That report cited documents that mentioned a “catastrophic deterioration of the potable water supply to Wallops Island” that would not be fixed until the beginning of 2026.
“All major hardware and infrastructure items have arrived and been installed and our civil works on the site are practically finished,” Beck said of the launch pad on the call. “Yes, and we even have water.”
He did acknowledge, though, that the target for the first launch, the second half of 2025, is a delay from previous statements that projected a first launch in mid-2025. “We’re giving ourselves a little bit more time to get it to the pad and get the launch. But I mean, we’re talking months here. It’s not very material,” he said.
He argued that various elements of Neutron and the launch site were making progress in parallel, giving him confidence they would come together in time for a launch later this year. “This isn’t our first rodeo and we’re no strangers to bringing a new rocket to the pad,” he said. “We run aggressive schedules and at the end of the day, as I always say, it’s a rocket program. But right now we’re planning for first launch in the second half of this year.”
Beck said later in the call that this revised schedule should not affect its ability to be on-ramped to the National Security Space Launch Phase 3 contract this year, noting that the contract requires “a credible path to launch by the end of the year.”
Electron update
Rocket Lab separately announced Feb. 27 a contract with Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space (iQPS), a Japanese company developing a constellation of radar imaging satellites, for launches of its satellites on Electron rockets.
The contract comes after one signed between the companies in July 2024, but only announced Feb. 3, for four Electron launches of iQPS satellites. The new contract brings the total number of Electron launches for iQPS to eight, six scheduled for 2025 and two in 2026.
Beck said in the earnings call that the company is planning “more than 20” Electron launches in 2025, including those of a suborbital version of the rocket called HASTE. Rocket Lab has performed two Electron launches so far this year, one for Kinéis Feb. 8 and one for BlackSky 10 days later.
Rocket Lab had, in early 2024, projected 22 Electron launches that year but ended up conducting 16, which the company blamed on customer delays. Beck said the company’s projection this year reflects some caution based on what happened last year.
“I think we’re just being a little bit more cautious this year because we had a big manifest last year and we launched everything that turned up,” he said. Demand for Electron remains strong, he added.
