Virgin Orbit and Rocket Lab USA Inc. were among 12 companies selected by NASA to provide launch services for the agency’s Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated Rideshare (VADR) missions.
The VADR contract has a five-year ordering period with a maximum total budget of $300 million and will be managed by the NASA Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Virgin Orbit (Nasdaq: VORB), which designs and manufactures its LauncherOne rockets in Long Beach, California, said it will use commercial satellite launch practices together with the flexibility provided by its LauncherOne system to enable more efficient launch timelines, mission-tailored orbits and competitive costs.
“This contract award is a great step forward for commercial space,” Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said in a statement. “The VADR contract vehicle now provides a platform for NASA to more easily contract for flights on our LauncherOne service. That means it will be easier than ever for us to work with NASA to provide targeted and economic access to space, maximizing the science gains from their small satellite missions and enabling ever greater technological innovation.”
Rocket Lab (Nasdaq: RKLB) founder and CEO Peter Beck said the program provides new opportunities for science and technology payloads and fostering a growing U.S. commercial launch market.
“We are absolutely thrilled to be selected by NASA to support VADR missions, continuing our heritage of delivering a reliable ride to space for the agency’s small satellites as both dedicated and rideshare missions," Beck said. "NASA’s Launch Services Program plays a crucial role in growing the U.S launch industry by ensuring resilient space access and we could not be prouder to play a role in that."
The VADR contracts will provide NASA with a broad range of Federal Aviation Administration-licensed commercial launch services capable of delivering payloads ranging from CubeSats to Class D missions to a variety of orbits
Virgin Orbit said it has already launched 13 satellites to space for NASA through programs like the Venture Class Launch Services program and the CubeSat Launch Initiative. The company said its selection by NASA as a VADR launch provider comes fresh off its third successful launch in under 12 months, bringing its total deployed satellites to 26.
Virgin Orbit said it is now scaling up the flight rate of its LauncherOne system to accommodate high demand from commercial customers, the national security community, the international community and, through programs like VADR, the U.S. civil space community.
Long Beach, California-based Rocket Lab said it launched the first Venture Class Launch Services mission in December 2018, successfully deploying 13 educational satellites to orbit from the Electron launch vehicle. The VADR contract joins a list of upcoming Rocket Lab missions for NASA, which include: providing a Photon spacecraft bus for CAPSTONE (the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment), providing two Photon spacecraft for a scientific mission to Mars and a plan to launch NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) on the Electron launch vehicle.
