Rocket Lab USA has announced that it has signed a contract with Leidos to launch four new missions. These missions, known as the Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron (Haste) missions, are scheduled to take place from 2024 to 2025. This comes after Rocket Lab’s successful completion of the first Haste mission for Leidos earlier this year as part of the Multi-Service Advanced Capability Hypersonic Test Bed (MACH-TB) program.
The upcoming missions will be launched from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 at Virginia’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, located within The National Aeronautics and Space Agency’s Wallops Flight Facility. This is all part of the MACH-TB project, which was awarded by Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane on behalf of the U.S. Defense Department’s Test Resource Management Center.
According to Brian Rogers, the senior director of Global Launch Services at Rocket Lab, the first Haste mission demonstrated its ability to accelerate the cadence of hypersonic flight testing. He expressed pride in being able to follow it up with four additional missions for Leidos, which will contribute to hypersonic technology innovation and maturation.
