Electron (Photon Kick Stage)

Electron with Photon

Mission Profile

Electron with Photon Kick Stage is a three-stage variant of Rocket Lab's small-lift Electron rocket, augmenting the standard carbon-composite two-stage vehicle with the Photon spacecraft bus as a restartable upper stage for higher or more precise orbits. Standing 18 meters tall with a liftoff mass of 12,550 kg and generating 224 kN of thrust, it can deliver up to 200 kg to low Earth orbit. First flown in January 2018, the Photon-equipped Electron dramatically expanded the vehicle's mission reach — including deep space trajectories — and culminated in the 2022 CAPSTONE mission, which placed a NASA cubesat into a near-rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon as a precursor to the Lunar Gateway.