Watch Rocket Lab launch private Japanese Earth-imaging satellite today

Rocket Lab will launch a radar satellite for the Japanese Earth-observation company Synspective today (Oct. 14), and you can watch the action live.

An Electron rocket is scheduled to lift off from Rocket Lab‘s New Zealand site today at 12:30 p.m. EDT (1630 GMT; 5:30 a.m. Oct. 15 local New Zealand time), on a mission called “Owl New World.”

You can watch it live via Rocket Lab beginning 30 minutes before launch. Space.com will simulcast Rocket Lab’s stream if, as expected, the company makes it available.

The mission’s name is a reference to the payload — one of Synspective’s Strix radar-imaging satellites. (Strix is a genus of owls.)

This particular spacecraft is “the first of a new generation of satellites by Synspective for its low Earth orbit constellation that provides high-frequency, high-resolution Earth observation data for disaster response and management, national security and environmental monitoring,” Rocket Lab wrote in a mission description, which you can find here.

If all goes according to plan today, Electron will deploy the Strix satellite 362 miles (583 kilometers) above Earth just over 50 minutes after launch.

Six Strix satellites have reach orbit to date, on six different Electron flights. There will be another 20 such launches after today to finish building out the constellation, according to Rocket Lab.

Today’s launch will be Rocket Lab’s 15th of 2025 and 73rd overall to date.