Virginia is for (space) lovers: Rocket Lab opens new seaside launch pad for reusable Neutron rocket

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — A new reusable rocket with jaws like a cosmic hippo, an innovative booster built by the company Rocket Lab, finally has its first launch pad on the Virginia coast and could make its first flight by the end of the year.

The novel booster, called Neutron, is Rocket Lab's newest and the company's first purpose-built reusable rocket to tap into the medium-size satellite launch market. The first flight is expected by the end of 2025 from the company's new pad, Launch Complex 3, which Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck officially opened for business on Thursday (Aug. 28).

"Today marks an extraordinary milestone, not just for Rocket Lab, but for the future of space access in America," Beck told a crowd of investors, reporters and company officials during a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday. "With the opening of Launch Complex 3, we take a major step forward in ensuring resilient and assured space access for the nation, a capability that has never been more critical."

Beck then hit a button that unleashed a torrent of water from the pad's deluge system.

Neutron's new launch site stands atop Pad 0D here at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility. It is a sleek pad, consisting of concrete and steel painted in the company's red, black and gray colors with room to grow to support a high flight rate. Initial Neutron flights will use a crane to lift the rocket into place, with more infrastructure to be added as needed.

"The pad is designed to be not just like a block of concrete; it's a really, really smart pad," Beck told Space.com in an interview on Thursday. "So we're able to shed a lot of systems out of the vehicle and push them in, down into the pad. Most people look at it and go, It's a piece of steel and concrete. But actually it is like a living, breathing, functioning machine."

Rocket Lab's first U.S. pad, Launch Complex 2, sits just next door and is used to launch Electron, the company's smaller workhorse rocket for small satellite missions. The company's primary launch site is Launch Complex 1, which consists of two pads for Electron flights on Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand.

The Neutron rocket is a medium-lift launch vehicle that will stand 141 feet (43 meters) tall and be able to lift payloads of up to 28,660 pounds (13,000 kilograms) on trips to low Earth orbit (LEO). The rocket's first stage will be fully reusable, powered by nine of the company's new Archimedes engines, which are fueled by liquid methane and liquid oxygen.

"Neutron is an entirely new kind of rocket, and it's been developed on a really, really rapid timeline to meet the demand for our constellation customers, and of course, high assurance missions for the nation," Beck said.

In a novel design, Rocket Lab has placed its Neutron second stage inside the first stage, instead of on top like more traditional rockets. That second stage will be deployed when the first stage's "Hungry Hippo" fairing (it's actually called that) opens its metal maw wide, ejecting a payload-bearing Neutron second stage powered by a single Archimedes engine into space. The first stage will then return to Earth for a land or ship-based landing.

Rocket Lab first unveiled its Neutron rocket concept in March 2021. Before then, Beck had said he'd eat his hat if the company built a booster larger than Electron. In a company video announcing Neutron, Beck did just that: He put a Rocket Lab baseball cap in a blender and ate pieces of the hat while sitting at a table between Neutron fairing halves.

The Neutron design has changed slightly during its development. When it was first announced, Neutron's first stage relied on seven Archimedes engines. Now it has nine. The rocket was also announced to make land-based landings. In March of this year, Rocket Lab unveiled a new landing platform to land Neutron at sea on some missions, much like SpaceX does with its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy boosters and Blue Origin plans to do with its New Glenn rocket.

"Our new landing platform will open space access even further by enabling even more mission opportunities that require maximum Neutron performance," Beck said at the time. The landing barge is called "Return On Investment," perhaps a nod to Beck's initial comments in 2021 that developing a landing ship was a costly endeavor. "It's really important also to be able to return the vehicle to the launch site, not costly barges way out in the middle of the ocean," Beck said during a video presentation in December 2021.

Neutron also appears to have grown in size and performance over the course of its development. In 2021, the rocket was originally announced as a 130-foot-tall (40 m) booster that could haul up to 18,000 pounds (8,000 kg) to LEO, and up to 4,400 pounds (2,000 kg) to the moon. It also had a 15-foot-wide (4.5 m) fairing, a traditional size, and was expected to make its first flight in 2024, a deadline that Rocket Lab missed.

Now, the rocket is 11 feet taller (with a height of 141 feet) and has a 17-foot (5 m) fairing that can accommodate larger payloads. And its lift capacity is greater now — up to 28,660 pounds to LEO. Neutron is made of a "lightweight specially formulated Rocket Lab carbon composite" material, the company has said.

For comparison, Rocket Lab's Electron stands 59 feet (18 m) tall and can carry payloads of just over 660 pounds (300 kg) to LEO. While Electron was not designed for reflight, Rocket Lab did recover first stage boosters from the sea and via a parachute and helicopter catch system to test the concept. The company has also reused Electron Rutherford engines on subsequent flights.

Beck said that the original specifications of Neutron were more of a placeholder design as the company worked to develop the medium-lift rocket. Shaun D'Mello, Rocket Lab's vice president for the Neutron rocket, added that, as Neutron was under development, two things helped refine its design. First, Russia's invasion of Ukraine led some satellite companies to forgo launching on Russian rockets, opening up a market for Neutron to help fill, D'Mello said.

"The other data point is that, for constellations, space vehicle designers and satellite makers also had real satellites they're starting to build; satellites got heavier," he added. "So the new magic number — we call it that sweet spot — became closer to the 12- to 15-ton range."

Rocket Lab already has customers lined up for Neutron launches. Last November, the company announced that it had signed its first customer for the rocket, but did not publicly disclose the client or mission payload. Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force announced it had booked a Neutron flight to test point-to-point launch cargo delivery. That mission is expected to fly in 2026.

In a November 2024 earnings call, Beck said the company aimed to launch one Neutron test flight in 2025, three missions in 2026 and five Neutron flights in 2027. The company would then target a flight rate of seven Neutron missions a year thereafter.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who cut the ribbon to open the Neutron pad on Thursday, said he welcomed the new rocket's addition to the commercial fleet operating out of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, since it will attract more tourists and business to the area.

"Before the end of this year, we will all gather and we will watch the first Neutron rocket lift off from Pad 0D right here together," Youngkin said. "If it's on Christmas Day, I'll bring the gifts."