{"id":216811,"date":"2025-06-28T21:08:22","date_gmt":"2025-06-29T02:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/rocket-lab-to-launch-european-navigation-tech-demo-satellites"},"modified":"2025-06-28T21:08:22","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T02:08:22","slug":"rocket-lab-to-launch-european-navigation-tech-demo-satellites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/rocket-lab-to-launch-european-navigation-tech-demo-satellites","title":{"rendered":"Rocket Lab to launch European navigation tech demo satellites"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/rocket-lab-to-launch-european-navigation-tech-demo-satellites.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 Rocket Lab will launch a pair of European navigation technology demonstration satellites, as Europe again is forced to look outside the continent for launch services.<\/p>\n<p>Rocket Lab announced June 25 it received a contract from the European Space Agency for the launch of two smallsats to test a proposed future low Earth orbit positioning, navigation and timing, or LEO-PNT constellation. Rocket Lab will launch the satellites on an Electron from its New Zealand launch complex no earlier than December.<\/p>\n<p>The Pathfinder A satellites, one built by GMV and the other by Thales Alenia Space, are the first for a 10-satellite constellation intended to demonstrate LEO-PNT. The satellites will be launched into orbits of 510 kilometers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON \u2014 Rocket Lab will launch a pair of European navigation technology demonstration satellites, as Europe again is forced to look outside the continent for launch services. Rocket Lab announced June 25 it received a contract from the European Space Agency for the launch of two smallsats to test a proposed future low Earth orbit [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}