Overview
- Lift-off is planned from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Island, with the exact date to be set about 24 hours in advance based on conditions.
- The mission will fly Hypersonix’s DART AE on a HASTE suborbital rocket to validate propulsion, materials, sensors and guidance in regimes not replicable on the ground.
- DART AE is a roughly 3–3.5 meter, ~300 kilogram, hydrogen-fueled scramjet vehicle with a 3D-printed high-temperature alloy airframe, and this test article will be expended over the Atlantic.
- Rocket Lab describes HASTE as a reinforced Electron variant capable of tailored hypersonic profiles up to Mach 20 and about 700 kilograms to suborbital space, marking its fourth hypersonic mission in under six months.
- Hypersonix says U.S. shipping was delayed by a recent snowstorm, yet the Cassowary Vex mission—whose launch is dubbed “That’s Not a Knife”—remains targeted for late February.