WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab launched a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging satellite for a Japanese company March 14, the first of eight such missions Rocket Lab has under contract with that customer.
The Electron rocket lifted off from Pad B of Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 at Mahia Peninsula, New Zealand, at 8 p.m. Eastern. The payload, the QPS-SAR-9 satellite, separated from the kick stage nearly an hour later after being placed into a planned orbit of 575 kilometers at an inclination of 42 degrees.
The satellite is the latest for the Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc. (iQPS), a Japanese company with long-term ambitions to operate a constellation of 36 SAR satellites to provide high-resolution radar imagery.
Rocket Lab announced in February two separate contracts with iOPS, each for four launches. Each launch would carry a single satellite. Six of the launches are scheduled for this year and the other two in 2026.This launch was the first under those contracts and the second overall for iQPS, after a launch of the QPS-SAR-5 satellite in December 2023.
The launch is the third this year by Rocket Lab, with the next, carrying the final set of five Kinéis tracking satellites, scheduled for as soon as March 17. Rocket Lab said in an earnings call Feb. 27 that it was planning “more than 20” Electron launches this year, counting both orbital missions and those of its HASTE suborbital variant.
“To hit scale is a really important part of the equation,” Brian Rogers, vice president of global launch services at Rocket Lab, said during a launch panel at the Satellite 2025 conference March 10. “Being able to hit cadence by any means necessary is the secret sauce.”