Two emerging rocketmakers have received a key greenlight on their road to competing for Space Force satellite launches.
Service officials announced Thursday that Rocket Lab and Stoke Space will join Blue Origin, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance as contenders for future launch missions. The two companies each received $5 million task orders to “conduct an initial capabilities assessment and develop their approach to tailored mission assurance.”
If they can clear that inspection—and successfully launch a rocket to space by year’s end—they could start bidding on the next tranche of launches in Lane 1 of the larger group called National Space Security Launch Phase 3. At least 30 Lane-1 missions will be awarded between fiscal 2025 and 2029 for a total of some $5.6 billion, Space Systems Command has said.
“With today’s award, the Space Force expanded our portfolio of launch systems able to deliver critical space capability. These new partners bring innovative approaches and increased competition to our mission area,” Brig. Gen. Kristin Panzenhagen, the program executive officer for Assured Access to Space, said in a statement. “Our Lane 1 goal is to bring in new partners to increase capacity, resiliency, and speed.”
In 2023, Space Force split NSSL Phase 3 into two groups: less-risky missions in Lane 1 and more challenging ones in Lane 2. The idea was to hasten the market entry of more rocketmakers and drive down launch costs. But no new entrant has cleared the bar, and last year, officials awarded SpaceX a $733.5 million contract for the first set of Lane 1 missions.
Both companies have been developing medium-lift vehicles to break into the market, with Rocket Lab readying its Neutron rocket and Stoke Space’s Nova rocket.
At the end of last year, Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck said the company will be able to launch Neutron by the end of 2025, despite questions about the readiness of its rocket and launch infrastructure. Rocket Lab is being sued by a shareholder who alleges the company and Beck made false and/or misleading statements about the company’s true timeline for Neutron.
When the Space Force launched the competition in 2023, officials knew it wouldn’t bring in new entrants immediately, but they didn’t want to wait for companies to be ready before launching the dual-lane approach, Panzenhagen told reporters last year.
“We never expected that it was going to be immediate in the first year because this is rocket science, right? Developing rockets, designing them, producing them, buying them is hard. We’ve got a lot of new companies working at it that we’re excited to bring on, but we know that it’s going to take time to flush all this out,” Panzenhagen said.
