Rocket Lab wins another defense-related space contract

Rocket Lab has won an $816 cardinal declaration — its largest to day — with the U.S. Space Development Agency arsenic the institution continues to diversify beyond its “rocket company” label.

The institution said Friday that its subsidiary, Rocket Lab USA, was awarded a premier declaration by the Space Development Agency (SDA) to plan and manufacture 18 satellites. The satellites volition beryllium quipped with precocious rocket warning, tracking, and defence sensors for the agency’s Tracking Layer Tranche 3 program.

This declaration is abstracted from an existing $515 cardinal grant to present satellites for SDA’s Transport Layer-Beta Tranche 2 program. That programme aims to supply a outer communications web successful debased Earth orbit that sends encrypted, low-latency information to the military.

Together, Rocket Lab has SDA contracts valued astatine much than $1.3 billion.

Rocket Lab has expanded into defence and has much precocious said it would bid for multibillion-dollar Department of Defense initiatives similar Golden Dome.