Rocket Lab launches private Japanese Earth-imaging satellite to orbit

The "Owl New World" mission lifted off today (Oct. 14) at 12:33 p.m. ET.

Rocket Lab launched a radar satellite for Synspective today (Oct. 14), the seventh spacecraft it has lofted for the Japanese Earth-observation company to date.

An Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab's New Zealand site today at 12:33 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT; 5:33a.m. Oct. 15 local New Zealand time), on a mission called "Owl New World."

The name is a reference to the payload — one of Synspective's Strix radar-imaging satellites. (Strix is a genus of owls.)

This particular spacecraft is "the first of a new generation of satellites by Synspective for its low Earth orbit constellation that provides high-frequency, high-resolution Earth observation data for disaster response and management, national security and environmental monitoring," Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description, which you can find here.

This Strix satellite has a particularly wide frame, which spurred Rocket Lab to build a custom "arrowhead" payload fairing to accommodate it.

All went according to plan on today's launch, according to Rocket Lab: Electron deployed the Strix satellite 362 miles (583 kilometers) above Earth just over 50 minutes after launch, right on schedule.

Seven Strix satellites have reached the final frontier to date, on seven different Electron flights. All of these missions have had "owl" names: "The Owl's Night Begins," "The Owl's Night Continues," "The Owl Spreads Its Wings," "Owl Night Long," "Owl For One, One For Owl," "Owl The Way Up" and now "Owl New World."

There will be another 20 such launches after today to finish building out the constellation, according to Rocket Lab.

Today's launch was Rocket Lab's 15th of 2025 and 73rd overall to date.

Quelle: SC