Rocket Lab lands Pentagon deal to run 20 hypersonic tests with HASTE
Rocket Lab won a $190 million Pentagon contract to conduct 20 hypersonic flight tests over four years using its HASTE suborbital variant of the Electron rocket, enabling payloads to experience Mach 5+ conditions before release. The MACH-TB 2.0 program aims to accelerate hypersonic testing by leveraging commercial launchers, complementing constrained government test infrastructure; Rocket Lab’s backlog now exceeds 70 missions.