Rocket Lab Reaches 100th Mission With Nov. 14 Electron Launch

"It's an unprecedented milestone for a commercial small-lift orbital rocket, and a threshold rarely crossed in modern spaceflight," Beck said. "But what matters most to us and our customers is that we have achieved a 96% reliability rate across 99 launches."

In short: the pace is the record, but the reliability figure is what Rocket Lab sells.

What is flying on the 100th mission?

The payload belongs to iQPS, a Tokyo-based company building a constellation of three dozen synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites in low Earth orbit. "The Mountain God Rises" is Rocket Lab's 11th launch for iQPS to date.

If all goes to plan, Electron's upper "kick stage" — a small propulsion module that places satellites into precise orbits — will deploy a single iQPS spacecraft 357 miles (575 kilometers) above Earth.

SAR satellites use radar rather than visible light to image the planet. That lets them see through cloud cover and work at night as well as during the day, a key advantage over optical-wavelength spacecraft that depend on sunlight and clear skies.

For radar satellite operators, that means more consistent imaging regardless of weather or time of day.

Why is the rocket painted differently?

Electron will mark the occasion with a special paint job on its first stage.

"Black rocket 🤝 Golden milestone. Electron is all dressed up for launch 100," Rocket Lab posted on X on Tuesday, Nov. 10, alongside a photo of the specially painted booster.

Do all 100 missions count the same?

Not quite. Nine of Rocket Lab's missions were suborbital, flown on a variant of Electron called HASTE, which customers use to test technologies in a hypersonic flight environment. Beck's 96% reliability figure covers the 99 launches to date.

The takeaway: watch the stream at 12:30 a.m. EST on Nov. 14 — if Electron flies, a small-lift rocket will have reached 100 missions faster than any commercial rocket before it.