Electron’s 73^rd launch. Source | Rocket Lab

Rocket Lab (Long Beach, Calif., U.S.) has signed a direct contract for two dedicated Electron launches with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA, Tokyo, Japan), signifying the criticality of the composites-intensive rocket to international space agencies requiring responsive launch and dedicated access to space. 

Launching from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, the two Electron missions will deploy satellites for JAXA’s Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program. The first launch, scheduled from December 2025, will deploy the agency’s RApid Innovative payload demonstration SatellitE-4 (RAISE-4) spacecraft, a single satellite that will demonstrate eight technologies developed by private companies, universities and research institutions throughout Japan. Mission information about Rocket Lab’s first launch for JAXA will be announced shortly. 

The second launch, scheduled for 2026, is a JAXA-manifested rideshare of eight separate spacecraft that includes educational smallsats, an ocean monitoring satellite, a demonstration satellite for ultra-small multispectral cameras and a deployable antenna that can be packed tightly using origami folding techniques and unfurled to 25 times its size. 

Rocket Lab is a launch leader for the Japanese space industry, with more than two dozen dedicated missions booked to fly on Electron through to the end of the decade. These include constellation deployment missions for satellite operators iQPS and Synspective, in addition to the multiple launches already completed in 2025 with 100% mission success. Other successful missions for Japanese satellite operators include the “On Closer Inspection” mission on February 2024 for Astroscale-Japan for the first phase of its orbital debris removal program; and the “Running Out Of Fingers” mission launched in 2019 for Tokyo-based company ALE.