Rocket Lab USA Inc. has opened its new engine-development center in Long Beach.

The launch provider, also based in Long Beach, will use the 144,000-square-foot space to support the high-rate production of its 3D-printed Rutherford engine, as well as development and production for its new Archimedes engine.

The center was previously Virgin Orbit’s headquarters and factory for Virgon’s Launcher One vehicle. Rocket Lab took over the lease for the facility and acquired the factory’s production assets, machinery and equipment in May for $16.1 million in a bankruptcy auction.  

Rocket Lab’s chief executive, Peter Beck, said the company was excited to grow its Long Beach team.

The engine-development center builds on the legacy of the Rutherford engine and signals a new era at Rocket Lab with the development of Archimedes, a liquid oxygen-methane engine that will power the reusable Neutron rocket, Beck said.

“By co-locating our engine-development center near our Long Beach headquarters and production complex, we’ve maximized collaboration between our engineering and manufacturing to ensure streamlined efficiency as we continue ramping up Electron launch cadence and get closer to Neutron’s debut launch,” Beck added in a statement. 

The engine-development center was  officially opened by Long Beach Mayor
Rex Richardson. 

“I am proud to welcome and celebrate Rocket Lab’s new state-of-the-art engine development center here to Long Beach,” Richardson said in a statement. “By choosing Long Beach for this new expansion, it further cements our role as a nationally significant hub of space technology and manufacturing.”

After being manufactured at the engine-development center, the Archimedes engines will undergo testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, where Rocket Lab is establishing a dedicated test facility. From there, the Archimedes engines will be integrated onto the Neutron launch vehicle in preparation for lift-off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 3 at Virginia Spaceport Authority’s Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. 

The Rutherford engines complete testing in New Zealand before integration onto Electron and launch from Rocket Lab’s two Electron launch sites: Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and Launch Complex 2 in Virginia.

The Electron rocket recently sustained a mishap in a launch from New Zealand.

In a release from Sept. 19, the company said that following lift-off from Launch Complex 1 the rocket successfully completed a first-stage burn and stage separation as planned, before an issue was experienced at around a little after two minutes into the flight, resulting in the end of the mission.

The “We Will Never Desert You” mission was to place a satellite from Capella Space Corp., in San Francisco, to low-Earth orbit. 

As a result of the mishap, the company restated its third-quarter revenue to $66-$68 million from the previous guidance of $73-$77 million.

“Rocket Lab has previously completed 37 successful Electron missions, deploying 171 satellites to orbit. With multiple Electron launch vehicles in production, and launch sites standing ready, Rocket Lab is in position to return to flight as soon as investigations are complete and corrective measures are in place,” it said in a release.