Rocket Lab celebrates its 30th launch and the 150th satellite sent into orbit

Today's Rocket Lab launch, "The Owl Spreads Its Wings," was as unremarkable as a rocket into orbit can get, but it also marked a few milestones for the growing space company: 30 launches and 150 satellites sent into space.

The company's first trip to orbit was in January 2018, technically Electron's second test flight, but the first successful delivery of a payload into space. This was after more than 10 years of design, engineering and manufacturing since the company was founded in 2006.

He then had an uninterrupted streak of 18 launches, but on the 20th there was an anomaly and he lost the payload and the vehicle. But as founder and CEO Peter Beck told me shortly after, "no more than seconds after realizing we had an anomaly on our hands, the team was already working on it." And they were ready to fly a month later.

The company's ambitions have only grown since then, with plans for spacecraft design, a trip to Venus, and a bigger and better launch vehicle called Neutron that will rival the biggest peers in the world. RocketLab. Of course, according to Beck, that was all that was planned from the start: they had to get the launch right first.

2022 has had nothing but successes, including the first attempt to catch a falling first stage with a helicopter. They'll try again by the end of the year, but you can relive that thrilling moment here:

Today's launch (well... tomorrow, technically, since they're in New Zealand) was for Japanese company Synspective, which took over the entire vehicle to deliver its StriX-1 satellite in a circular orbit of 563 kilometers. (Rocket Lab also delivered two other StriX satellites in February this year and December 2020.)

We hope to hear more about Rocket Lab's ambitions when Beck talks to TechCrunch during our TC: Space Event sessions in December.