Rocket Lab Launches Its 94th Electron for Synspective, Boeing Delivers the Final O3b mPOWER Trio to SES, and Astroscale Awards Isar the ADRAS-J2 Launch

Rocket Lab launched its 94th Electron from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand at 12:01 a.m. NZST on September 3, deploying a Synspective StriX synthetic aperture radar satellite to a 575-kilometer orbit. On the same day, Boeing delivered the final three O3b mPOWER satellites, F11, F12 and F13, to SES for a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch later this month, closing out a medium Earth orbit constellation whose first four satellites had power-module failures that led to a $218 million insurance claim, upgrades to satellites seven through 11 and the two added spacecraft.

Astroscale Japan picked Isar Aerospace to launch ADRAS-J2 on Spectrum from Andøya during Japan's FY2027, the follow-on to the 2024 ADRAS-J rendezvous demo and the first commercial attempt to capture and remove large debris never designed for retrieval. It is Astroscale's second Spectrum booking after ELSA-M, and it comes as Isar prepares a second Spectrum flight after losing its March 2025 debut. Telesat and Farcast added a smaller Lightspeed milestone: an over-the-air demonstration through the low Earth orbit (LEO) 3 test satellite validated Farcast's electronically steered antenna, clearing the way to a fully integrated user terminal.

MDA Space CEO Mike Greenley told In the Money that 2026 revenue is running near $2.5 billion on a combined basis with two pending acquisitions and that 2027 could land roughly 50 percent higher, framing a plan to grow four to six Canadian suppliers into billion-dollar businesses as MDA scales toward a $10 billion revenue horizon. York Space Systems, meanwhile, unveiled the LX/V-Class satellite bus for sustained missions above roughly 300 kilometers, aimed at moving-target indication and missile-warning work; Redwire, Kreios and Bellatrix are chasing sub-300 kilometer altitudes with clean-sheet designs.