A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Rocket Lab has signalled September 19 for its next Māhia space launch.
The “We Will Never Desert You” mission is scheduled to launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula for American space tech company Capella Space (Capella), a leading provider of commercial Synthetic Aperture Radar(SAR) imagery.
“We Will Never Desert You” will launch the second of Capella’s third-generation SAR Acadia satellites to low Earth orbit.
It will be Rocket Lab’s third launch for Capella in 2023, and second launch in a multi-launch contract of four missions. Capella’s highest quality, high resolution SAR imagery penetrates all weather conditions and captures clear imagery 24/7, day and night, anywhere on Earth, delivered through a fully-automated ordering and delivery platform. Capella’s existing SAR capabilities includes long-dwell imaging and extended duty-cycle – which results in more images collected per orbit than any other SAR systems. Acadia will augment Capella’s existing constellation with increased bandwidth and power, faster downlink speeds, and reduced latency.
As Capella’s sole launch provider in 2023 to build out the company’s Earth-imaging constellation, Rocket Lab’s most recent launch, “We Love The Nightlife”, successfully deployed Capella’s first Acadia satellite to space just weeks ago on August 24. An earlier mission for Capella this year, “Stronger Together”, successfully delivered two satellites to space for the company from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 in Wallops, Virginia, in the United States, in March.
