/sci/ - Science & Math

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/rocket-lab-adds-haste-launch-211500662.html

What are the spooks cooking up here?

Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (Nasdaq: RKLB) ("Rocket Lab" or "the Company"), a global leader in launch services and space systems, today announced it has signed a launch services agreement with the US Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) for a HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron) mission from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 in Virginia.

The HASTE mission will deploy a suborbital payload by Australian company Hypersonix called DART AE, a scramjet-powered hypersonic vehicle capable of flying non-ballistic flight patterns at speeds of up to Mach 7 (approx. 8,350 kilometres / 5,320 miles per hour). The mission will launch from Rocket Lab’s dedicated launch site at the Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island as early as Q1, 2025. The HyCat mission will demonstrate HASTE’s ‘direct inject’ capability by deploying the Hypersonix payload during ascent, while still within Earth’s atmosphere.

This latest HASTE mission is the seventh suborbital launch contract awarded to Rocket Lab this year, including Rocket Lab’s first HASTE mission launched on 17 June 2023 for Leidos under the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program. Leidos has since signed on for four more HASTE missions to launch in 2024 and 2025. Another HASTE launch contract was also announced in August 2023 for a confidential customer.