Rocket Lab has delayed the maiden flight of its Neutron rocket again. The first launch is now "expected to occur in 2027," and it won't be early in the year, The Register reports.
The holdup is in the carbon composite. CEO Peter Beck said during a briefing that a first-stage tank failed qualification because of third-party processing, so Rocket Lab moved that work in-house. Then it found voids forming between the composite layers of the propellant dome. Beck said those "don't necessarily mean that the dome would fail in flight," but they cut into the safety margin, so the process had to change.
Beck says the fix is in. The cost is time: the cryo and hydrostatic test campaigns now run into Q1 2027, and only after that will Rocket Lab set a new launch date. In August, the company was still targeting Neutron's arrival at the pad in Q4 2026.
Neutron has slipped every year since Rocket Lab announced it more than five years ago, from 2024 to 2025 to 2026. It's designed to carry up to 13,000 kg to low Earth orbit with a fully reusable first stage, which puts it in the same class as SpaceX's Falcon 9. Investors didn't take the news well. Rocket Lab shares fell from about $63 to near $53 in after-hours trading.
— via The Register