en.Wedoany.com Reported - A radar satellite for Tokyo-based company iQPS reached orbit successfully in the early hours of today (August 6), five weeks later than originally planned.

The satellite was launched by Rocket Lab's Electron rocket from New Zealand at 5:18 a.m. Eastern Time today (09:18 GMT; 21:18 local New Zealand time).

This launch was the second attempt for the satellite mission. Rocket Lab had originally planned to launch on June 30, but aborted at the last minute for undisclosed reasons.

This morning's flight went smoothly. Rocket Lab named the mission "The Grain Goddess Provides" and announced via X that the Electron rocket had deployed the satellite into a target orbit approximately 357 miles (575 kilometers) above Earth.

The satellite, designated QPS-SAR-13 and also known as MIKURA-I, is named after a Japanese goddess symbolizing harvest and prosperity. It carries a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capable of penetrating cloud cover for day-and-night imaging.

iQPS is building a constellation of 36 such SAR satellites in low Earth orbit. The Electron rocket is the workhorse launcher for this network. This launch was the 8th of 15 missions Rocket Lab has planned to support the constellation's construction.

This mission marked Rocket Lab's 92nd launch overall and its 13th mission of 2026. Most of these flights use the 59-foot-tall (18-meter) Electron rocket, the company's workhorse small-satellite launcher. However, an increasing number of missions are now being handled by HASTE, a suborbital variant of Electron that allows customers to test technologies in hypersonic flight environments.

The pace of HASTE launches may accelerate. Rocket Lab recently signed a $266 million contract with the U.S. Space Force to conduct up to 18 suborbital missile defense missions, most of which will lift off from a new launch site in Alaska.