“We’re excited to bid this time round for NSSL Lane 1, and we think Neutron is a really good vehicle for it,” Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO Peter Beck told SpaceNews.
The U.S. Space Force last week released a request for proposals from launch companies seeking to challenge SpaceX, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin in the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program.
The NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 program is structured as an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract, enabling the Space Force to on-ramp providers on a yearly basis, and award individual task orders as needed.
The Space Force requires the next round of Lane 1 bidders to be ready for a first launch by December 2025, a timeline Beck says Neutron can meet.
Wow, it’s impressive that by this time next year they expect to be flying customer payloads on Neutron.
There’s still variants of Berger’s law to contend with, but they’ve definitely kept up an impressive development pace with Neutron.
