WALLOPS ISLAND, Virginia — Rocket Lab announced Wednesday that it has chosen the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia for its U.S. launch site. The company currently launches its Electron rockets from New Zealand.
Follow SpaceNews senior staff writer Jeff Foust for live coverage of the announcement. His full story will be posted here this afternoon.
At the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia for an announcement the morning of a new company launching from the spaceport.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 17, 2018
And it’s official: Rocket Lab is establishing its US launch site, LC-2, at Wallops.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 17, 2018
Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck: we’ll be investing more than $20M into the launch site, with first launch planned fro 3rd quarter of next year.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 17, 2018
Shaun D’Mello, Rocket Lab: this facility will be based on LC-1 in New Zealand, able to support 12 launches a year.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 17, 2018
Shannon Valentine, Virginia Sec. of Transportation: governor signed a $5M grant last night that will be going towards this partnership.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 17, 2018
Dale Nash, Virginia Space: significant competition for this from other spaceports, but we worked through all the requirements.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 17, 2018
Why Wallops? Beck: they supported an aggressive time scale, and had the team and infrastructure. It’s also a “quiet” range [i.e., not a lot of other launches] to support our desired flight rate.
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) October 17, 2018