Shares of rocket company Rocket Lab USA (RKLB 3.29%) jumped more than 6% early Thursday morning before retreating to a more modest (and, I'd argue, appropriate) gain of 2.1% through 10:50 a.m. ET.
Overnight (or very early this morning, depending on how you look at it), Rocket Lab launched its 46th Electron rocket. This was its first-ever Electron mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) launched from U.S. soil.
The launch went well.
"Live and Let Fly"
Continuing a tradition of attaching a clever name to each rocket it launches, Rocket Lab sent its Live and Let Fly rocket into orbit for NRO at 3:25 a.m. ET today. Previously, the company had launched four missions for NRO, but from its Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. This one launched from Launch Complex 2 site on Wallops Island, Virginia.
This latest launch fell under Rocket Lab's Rapid Acquisition of a Small Rocket (RASR) NRO contract. We still don't know how much the RASR contract is worth to Rocket Lab -- either in its entirety or per individual launch. What we do know is that RASR is part of a series of contracts awarded to space companies Rocket Lab, BlackSky, and Maxar back in 2022. Those contracts were valued in the multiple billions of dollars.
Is Rocket Lab stock a buy?
Today's news confirms Rocket Lab is still winning work and booking sales under this contract (however much it's worth). And the fact that Rocket Lab has begun launching for NRO from U.S. territory suggests it's in a better position now to win even more work -- seeing as RASR's goal is to "capitalize on the speed and responsiveness of commercial launch services."
Moving the launch site closer to the customer would seem a logical way to progress toward that goal.
