By Kurtis Archer | 2025-03-13

Private US space company Rocket Lab said it will launch its Neutron Rocket, a reusable spacecraft, in the second half of this year.

The rocket is designed to eventually allow landings at sea, comparable to the abilities of SpaceX's Falcon 9. Neutron is being designed for travel to various Earth orbits and future missions to the Moon and beyond.

When first deployed in mid- or late 2025, the rocket will land back at its launch site on Wallops Island, Virginia.

Meanwhile, Rocket Lab will be customizing a 112-meter-long offshore barge named Return on Investment (ROI) to act as landing platform for the rocket when it touches down at sea.

"Modifications will include autonomous ground support equipment to capture and secure the landed Neutron, blast shielding to protect equipment during Neutron landings, and station-keeping thrusters for precise positioning," the company said in a statement on February 27.

Construction of ROI will continue throughout 2025, and the landing platform is expected to be operational in 2026.

Opening space access

Rocket Lab plans to have only one sea splashdown and to have subsequent launches land at sea -- with at least one expected to land on ROI in 2026, Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck confirmed, according to a March 10 Motley Fool report.

Beck spoke of the upcoming technology during a February 26 earnings call, and the company published a statement announcing the latest news the following day.

"We're working hard to bring Neutron online with one of the fastest development schedules in history for a new rocket, because we know medium-lift launch opportunities are limited and space access is being stifled," Beck said in a statement.

"Neutron's debut launch planned for later this year will help to ease that bottleneck, and our new landing platform will open space access even further by enabling even more mission opportunities that require maximum Neutron performance."

Regarding the Virginia site that Neutron will use before ROI is ready to accept the rockets at sea, Beck said: "All major hardware and infrastructure items have arrived and been installed, and our civil works on the site are practically finished."

The company introduced a new product that will integrate with the Neutron Rocket called Flatellite -- a flat satellite that can be mass produced and stacked in multiples, allowing several to be launched at one time for their inclusion in large constellations.

"The industry is hungry for versatile satellites that are affordable and built fast in high volumes," Beck said. "This is why we created Flatellite."

These new flat satellites are an important step in bringing Rocket Lab closer to being an end-to-end space company, operating its own network of satellites to deliver services to Earth from orbit, said Beck.

Risks with ocean landing

To be sure, environmental risks exist for the upcoming rocket and barge.

The ocean environment is highly corrosive, and robust measures will be needed to protect Neutron's structure and sensitive electronics, as well as the components of ROI, analysts say.

The unpredictability of ocean weather will be an additional risk, potentially disrupting landing operations at sea and damaging the rocket and its platform.

Such conditions can complicate hardware retrieval efforts.

A platform moving on the surface of the ocean is not the easiest target for the precise landing of a large rocket, and there are expected to be many technical challenges and operational risks involved in developing the system.