Summer Myatt
Rocket Lab has booked a follow-on contract from Leidos to carry out additional launches for the latter’s hypersonic test project with the U.S. Navy.
The deal covers four missions to support the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed program, managed by the Naval Surface Warfare Center-Crane Division, and follows an initial large-scale test in June that used Rocket Lab’s Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron platform, the company said Tuesday.
Leidos’ Dynetics subsidiary leads an industry team that won an other transaction agreement in October 2022 to provide the Department of Defense a testing capability to demonstrate weapons that can move five times the speed of sound.
The partnership employs Rocket Lab’s HASTE, a suborbital rocket built on the Electron system and designed to deploy hypersonic payloads.
Missions under the contract are scheduled to occur in 2024 and 2025 at a company facility located in NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.