Rocket Lab launches Japanese Earth-observing radar satellite to orbit

Rocket Lab launched an Earth-observing radar satellite to orbit for the Japanese company iQPS on Wednesday morning (June 11).

An Electron rocket topped with the QPS-SAR-11 spacecraft lifted off from Rocket Lab‘s New Zealand site on Wednesday at 11:31 a.m. EDT (1531 GMT; 3:31 a.m. on June 12 local New Zealand time).

The Electron did its job, deploying the satellite into a circular orbit 357 miles (575 kilometers) above Earth roughly 51 minutes after launch as planned.

Rocket Lab called this mission “The Mountain God Guards.” That’s a reference to the QPS-SAR-11 satellite’s nickname, Yamatsumi-1, which honors a Japanese god of the mountains.

Yamatsumi-1 will join iQPS’ synthetic aperture radar (SAR) constellation, which views targets on Earth in all weather conditions, day and night.

“To date, 10 QPS-SAR satellites have been launched, and iQPS aims to establish a constellation of 36 satellites,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description, which you can find here.

“This will enable the delivery of a ‘NearReal-Time Data Provisioning Service,’ allowing for the observation of specific regions worldwide at an average interval of 10 minutes,” the company added. “This will make it possible to collect continuous images as data, and to accumulate data not only on ‘Stationary Objects’ such as land and buildings, but also on ‘Moving Objects’ such as vehicles, ships, and cattle and livestock.”

“The Mountain God Guards” was the the eighth mission of 2025 and 66th overall flight for the 59-foot-tall (18-meter-tall) Electron, which gives small satellites dedicated rides to orbit.

Rocket Lab has now launched four missions for iQPS (which is short for “Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space”), and there are more to come: Today’s flight was the third of eight contracted missions for iQPS expected to lift off in 2025 and 2026, according to Rocket Lab.

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 12:35 p.m. ET on June 11 with news of successful satellite deployment.