Welcome to Edition 8.47 of the Rocket Report! We are now very close to mid-2026, a year in which several new US rockets were advertised as potentially making their debuts. But now, we have to wonder whether any—Rocket Lab’s Neutron, Stoke Space’s Nova, Relativity Space’s Terran R, and Astra’s Rocket 4—will make it.

I’d probably put the over/under at something like 0.5 of these launching. Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Rocket Lab has executed a rapid response mission, launching the Victus Haze just 16 hours and 42 minutes after receiving the US Space Force’s Notice to Launch, beating their previous record by over ten hours.

The launch was scarcely announced in advance. The only public indication of an impending launch was the release of a warning for pilots and sailors to steer clear of the rocket’s flight path. Rocket Lab did not provide a livestream of the launch, as they do for most of their missions.

The Space Force announced plans for the mission in 2024 when it selected Rocket Lab and True Anomaly to build and launch two satellites into low-Earth orbit. The idea was to launch a small satellite built by True Anomaly first, posing as a satellite from a potential adversary, like China or Russia. Rocket Lab’s satellite would be on standby to go up and inspect the True Anomaly spacecraft, ready to launch on short notice once military officials gave the order.