Rocket Lab is best known for the Electron launch vehicle, but the company’s earnings results still show that it is much more than a rocket company.
The company reported third-quarter revenue of $68 million, of which $46.3 million came from its aerospace systems division. (That’s a 17% year-over-year revenue increase.) Rocket Lab also billed two milestones as part of a $143 million contract to deliver 17 spacecraft to customer MDA, with the first spacecraft expected to arrive in the first quarter of next year will be delivered. .
Rocket Lab’s space systems business sells satellite components such as star trackers, reaction wheels and solar panels, complete spacecraft and the Photon satellite bus used by customers such as Varda Space and NASA.
On the launch vehicle side, Rocket Lab had two successful launches in the third quarter: back-to-back recovery missions that parachuted Electron’s booster to Earth, with one of those missions flying a previously flown Rutherford engine for the first time . That engine “performed flawlessly,” CEO Peter Beck told investors on Wednesday.
The company’s launch frequency was interrupted during the 41st Electron flight in mid-September, when an anomaly occurred mid-flight leading to a total loss of payload, a single synthetic aperture radar satellite from Capella Space.
Rocket Lab received FAA approval to resume Electron launches, and the investigation into the cause of the anomaly is in its final stages, the company said. Electron’s return to flight is now expected no earlier than November 28, in a launch window that extends into December for a special mission for Japan-based iQPS.
The anomaly happened incredibly quickly; in Beck’s words, “The team only had 1.6 seconds of anomalous data to work with.” An internal investigation found that the likely root cause of the anomaly was an “electric arc” that short-circuited the battery packs that supply power to Electron’s second stage, leading to a loss of power in the vehicle. A quarterly earnings presentation released Wednesday described this as a “unique and unusual interaction” of a number of circumstances that essentially created a perfect storm that allowed the electricity problem to arise.
Looking ahead, the company has 22 Electron missions planned for next year, with 9 booked as recovery missions and two suborbital hypersonic missions under Rocket Lab’s HASTE program.
Rocket Lab executives also provided some details regarding the development of the Neutron medium vehicle. The company completed second-stage tank tests and a combustion test of Archimedes, the massive rocket engine that will power Neutron.
The company reported a net loss of $40.6 million. For the fourth quarter of this year, the company expects revenue between $65 million and $69 million. Rocket Lab expects revenues to rise to between $95 million and $105 million in the first quarter of 2024, partly due to five Electron launches currently on the manifest.