Rocket Lab will launch a Japanese technology-demonstrating satellite tv for pc tonight (Dec. 6), and you may watch the motion dwell.
A 59-foot-tall (18 meters) Electron rocket is scheduled to launch the “RAISE and Shine” mission from Rocket Lab‘s New Zealand website tonight at 10 p.m. EST (0300 GMT and 4 p.m. native New Zealand time on Sunday, Dec. 7).
“RAISE and Shine” is the primary flight that Rocket Lab has contracted immediately with JAXA (the Japan Aerospace Exploration Company). It is a part of a two-flight cope with the Japanese house company; the second mission is a rideshare launch scheduled for early subsequent yr.
The California-based firm has an extended historical past with Japan general, nevertheless, launching greater than 20 missions up to now for firms primarily based within the Land of the Rising Solar.
As we speak’s launch will ship JAXA’s Speedy Revolutionary payload demonstration Satellite tv for pc-4, often called RAISE-4, to a round orbit 336 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth.
The satellite tv for pc’s full identify tells us broadly what it should do up there. RAISE-4 “will exhibit eight applied sciences developed by non-public firms, universities, and analysis establishments all through Japan,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description.
“RAISE and Shine” will proceed a record-breaking yr for Rocket Lab, which has launched 18 missions in 2025 thus far, all of them profitable. Fifteen of them have been orbital flights. The opposite three had been suborbital launches with HASTE, a modified model of Electron designed to assist clients check hypersonic applied sciences within the closing frontier.
Rocket Lab’s earlier single-year launch report was 16, set in 2024.
