Electron (two-stage)

Rocket Lab's Electron is described as a two-stage, expendable orbital launch vehicle, and this is exactly that configuration: the rocket on its own, without the optional third stage (the Curie-powered kick stage) or the Photon platform that often ride on top, without first-stage recovery hardware, and without the suborbital HASTE adaptation. It is the common base on which all of those versions are built. Both stages share the same 1.2 m diameter and burn RP-1 with liquid oxygen; the main structure is a lightweight carbon composite. The whole vehicle stands about 18 m tall and weighs roughly 13 t at liftoff; the first stage is 12.1 m long and the second 2.4 m.

What sets Electron apart is not its size but how it feeds its engines. Both stages use the Rutherford, the first electric-pump-fed engine to power an orbital-class rocket: instead of a turbopump driven by hot gas, its pumps are spun by electric motors running off lithium-polymer batteries. The first stage carries nine Rutherfords; the second a single vacuum-optimised one. That second stage carries three batteries that are "hot swapped" in flight, jettisoning two of them once depleted so the vehicle does not haul dead weight and more margin is left for payload. Almost all engine parts are 3D printed, which saves time and money in manufacturing.

Thrust figures differ between sources. The prose of both the English and the German Wikipedia gives 162 kN for the first stage at liftoff (the German article adds that it rises to 192 kN as air pressure falls) and 22 kN for the second stage; the English infobox instead gives 224.3 kN at sea level and 234 kN in vacuum for the first stage and 25.8 kN for the second, with specific impulses of 311 s and 343 s.

The standard payload fairing is 2.5 m long and 1.2 m in diameter, with a mass of 44 kg and a usable diameter of 1.07 m. Rocket Lab also announced custom versions: an expanded fairing 1.56 m across, an extended fairing and a dual-stack fairing. Synspective's StriX-α mission in December 2020 used the extended fairing.

Electron completed flight qualification in December 2016. The first test, named "It's a Test", was given a window from 22 May to 1 June 2017 (New Zealand time). After several weather delays it lifted off on 25 May 2017 from Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula. It carried no payload and was aimed at a 500 km orbit inclined at 85°. The first stage performed flawlessly, as did stage separation, second-stage ignition and fairing jettison. About four minutes into the flight, however, at an altitude of around 224 km, the telemetry feed to the range safety officer was lost and the rocket was destroyed. Post-flight analysis blamed ground equipment, not the vehicle: a receiver set up by a contractor without forward error correction enabled was corrupting the data. Rocket Lab made no changes to Electron and only adjusted its procedures.

It is the only flight in strictly two-stage form recorded in the sources consulted. On the second launch, "Still Testing", on 21 January 2018, Electron reached orbit for the first time with three CubeSats and the "Humanity Star", and debuted the third stage, which was not announced until after launch. Since then the rocket has often flown with that stage or with Photon. The first commercial flight, "It's Business Time", the third overall, came on 11 November 2018.

Capacity depends on the target orbit. According to the English Wikipedia, Electron was initially designed to carry 150 to 225 kg to a 500 km Sun-synchronous orbit; in August 2020 Rocket Lab raised that band to 225 to 300 kg, mainly thanks to better batteries. The German Wikipedia gives about 220 kg to an orbit inclined at 45° and about 150 kg to a Sun-synchronous orbit. None of the sources states whether these figures apply to the two-stage vehicle or to the one carrying the upper stage.

Making the carbon-composite parts used to take around 400 hours, much of it by hand. In late 2019 a robot nicknamed "Rosie" came online that produces all the composite parts for one Electron in 12 hours, and the company set a goal of cutting the full manufacturing cycle to seven days. In October 2018 it opened a factory able, by the company's account, to produce more than 50 rockets a year. Launch Complex 1 at Māhia was the first orbital launch operation funded and run entirely by the private sector; Launch Complex 2 at Wallops, Virginia, was chosen in October 2018 to serve government customers and hosted its first launch on 24 January 2023. A launch costs about 7.5 million US dollars.