Watch On
Rocket Lab will launch a mysterious satellite early Friday morning (June 20), and you can watch the action live.
An Electron rocket topped with a single spacecraft is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab’s New Zealand site on Friday at 3:33 a.m. EDT (0733 GMT; 7:33 p.m. local New Zealand time).
Rocket Lab will livestream the event, starting 30 minutes before launch. Space.com will carry the feed as well.
The mission, which Rocket Lab calls “Symphony in the Stars,” will send a satellite to a circular orbit 650 kilometers (404 miles) above Earth, if all goes according to plan.
“Symphony in the Stars” is the first of two missions for “a confidential commercial customer,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description. The second of those flights is expected to launch this year as well.
And that’s pretty much all of the information the company has revealed about Friday’s mission; for example, we don’t know what the satellite will do once it reaches orbit.
“Symphony in the Stars” will be the ninth mission of 2025 and 67th liftoff overall for Electron, a 59-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) rocket that gives small satellites dedicated rides to orbit.
Rocket Lab is also developing a larger, partially reusable rocket called Neutron, which is expected to debut sometime this year.