Rocket Lab, a Long Beach, California-based aerospace company that is perhaps best known for its ‘Electron’ range of low-weight orbital rockets that help assist small satellite launches, is preparing to expand its repertoire with the introduction of a launch vehicle that is designed to push hypersonic vehicles to Mach 5, which marks the step forward from supersonic to hypersonic speed.
The ‘Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron’ launch vehicle, or ‘HASTE’ for short, has a similar construction to the company’s well-known ‘Electron,’ but features the addition of a third stage that separates at altitudes of 80 km and can deploy hypersonic loads.
Having successfully carried out a test mission, the ‘HASTE’ hypersonic vehicle launch system is well and truly poised to play a big role in flight testing and a variety of space missions of interest to the military and scientific communities alike.
