Rocket Lab's HASTE Is Flying Hypersonic Missions for the Pentagon. Here's the Defense Business Hiding Inside a Space Stock.
Rocket Lab has carved out a growing niche in the defense sector.
Overview
Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB), a developer of reusable orbital rockets, is usually considered SpaceX's (NASDAQ: SPCX) much smaller competitor in the launch services market. But over the past three years, it quietly carved out a niche with HASTE (Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron), a launch vehicle for testing hypersonic and suborbital technologies.
Unlike its Electron rockets, which enter Earth's orbit, HASTE acts as a testbed for accelerating payloads to hypersonic velocities in suborbital environments. Its primary customer is the Department of Defense (DoD), which uses HASTE to solve a major bottleneck in testing experimental systems at hypersonic speeds under real atmospheric conditions.
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Originally published at www.fool.com.