Overview
- The Cassowary Vex mission, dubbed “That’s Not A Knife,” is scheduled to launch no earlier than late February with exact timing to be confirmed roughly 24 hours before liftoff.
- Rocket Lab will fly the suborbital HASTE mission from Launch Complex 2 at the Mid‑Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia.
- The payload is Hypersonix’s 3.5‑metre DART AE demonstrator powered by the company’s hydrogen‑fueled SPARTAN scramjet, a 3D‑printed engine with no moving parts designed for Mach 5+ flight.
- The first DART AE flight aims to validate propulsion, materials, sensors and guidance in true hypersonic conditions, and the single‑use vehicle is not expected to be recovered.
- Rocket Lab lists the Defense Innovation Unit and Hypersonix as customers, notes this is its fourth hypersonic test in under six months, and says HASTE enables controlled test profiles up to Mach 20; Hypersonix’s recent $46 million Series A is funding expanded flight‑test and manufacturing.