WASHINGTON — Rocket Lab said May 21 it won a $90 million contract from the U.S. Space Force to design, manufacture and operate two geostationary satellites the military will use to monitor and track objects in orbit.
The award marks Rocket Lab’s first satellite production program for geostationary orbit (GEO)..
The contract includes spacecraft manufacturing, launch integration and up to five years of on-orbit operations. The satellites will host two electro-optical sensor payloads previously ordered by the Space Systems Command under a separate $80.7 million contract with Geost, a payload manufacturer Rocket Lab acquired in 2025 and folded into Rocket Lab Optical Systems.
Rocket Lab, based in Long Beach, California, said the satellites will be built on its Lightning spacecraft bus, a satellite platform the company is using for missile-tracking satellites it is producing for the Space Development Agency as well as for commercial constellations.
The contract “transitions the program from payload prototyping to operational space vehicle delivery,” the company said.
The so-called Heimdall space domain awareness payloads are small electro-optical sensors designed to improve what military officials call “custody” of objects in orbit — persistent awareness of where satellites are located, how they maneuver and whether they may pose a threat.
The payloads are part of a broader Space Force initiative to improve monitoring of activity in geostationary orbit by deploying more distributed and commercially derived space surveillance capabilities.
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