Rocket Lab launches Open Cosmos satellites, kicking off bid for ‘sovereign’ European broadband

Rocket Lab opened its 2026 launch campaign by sending a pair of European communications satellites into high orbit Thursday, marking the first tangible step in a bid by UK-based Open Cosmos to build a “sovereign” broadband constellation for Europe.

Electron lifts off from New Zealand

At 11:52 p.m. local time in New Zealand on Jan. 22 (5:52 a.m. EST; 10:52 GMT), an Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on the Mahia Peninsula, carrying two Open Cosmos spacecraft on a mission the company dubbed “The Cosmos Will See You Now.” About 70 minutes later, the satellites were deployed into a circular orbit roughly 1,050 kilometers above Earth, in a near-polar path designed for broad coverage.

Rocket Lab said the flight — its first of the year and the 80th Electron mission overall — successfully placed the payloads into the planned trajectory. Open Cosmos confirmed it had established contact with both satellites.

“What a great way to start off the year, by welcoming a new customer and launching a mission tailored just for them,” Peter Beck, Rocket Lab’s founder and chief executive, said in a statement. “Today’s launch is a great showcase of the benefits of flying dedicated on Electron: accurate constellation deployment, streamlined access to space, and the reliability of consistently delivering mission success for our customers.”

From spectrum to spacecraft

For Open Cosmos, founded in 2015 and headquartered at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, the launch turns a recent regulatory victory into hardware in orbit. Just eight days earlier, on Jan. 14, the company secured control of Liechtenstein’s high-priority Ka-band spectrum filings for low Earth orbit — a prized slice of international frequency rights seen as a gateway to offering high-throughput broadband and secure government communications.

“This launch is a major milestone for Open Cosmos and a critical step in our mission to provide secure, sovereign connectivity for Europe and the world,” chief executive Rafel Jordà Siquier said. “Moving from spectrum to satellites in-orbit demonstrates not only the maturity of our system, but our ability to turn strategic ambition into operational capability extremely fast.”

The two satellites will act as early pathfinders for a proprietary low Earth orbit communications network Open Cosmos intends to build using those Ka-band rights. The company describes this launch as the “first activation phase” of a future constellation designed to serve governments, institutions and commercial customers with high-security links, complementing its existing Earth-observation missions.

Open Cosmos said the spacecraft, which are registered under Spain’s regulatory framework, will test key elements of the system, including satellite operations, ground infrastructure and spectrum use. The company has not publicly disclosed the eventual size or configuration of the planned constellation.

Liechtenstein’s filings and a shifting European market

The path to orbit began with an unlikely player. Liechtenstein, a landlocked country of about 40,000 people, holds scarce high-priority filings at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for Ka-band services in low Earth orbit. Those filings were previously tied to Rivada Space Networks, a venture backed by U.S. investors, but Liechtenstein revoked Rivada’s license in 2024 over concerns about financing and project progress, according to public statements from the principality.

On Jan. 14, the government announced that Open Cosmos would take over the LEO filings. “This decision underscores Liechtenstein’s commitment to making use of the frequencies allocated to us,” Hubert Büchel, the country’s minister of home affairs, economy and sport, said at the time. “We are pleased that, through this filing, with Open Cosmos, we are putting them to good and effective use.”

The British government publicly welcomed the move. UK Space Minister Liz Lloyd called the spectrum award “fantastic news for Open Cosmos and for the UK’s thriving space sector,” saying it was “a testament to British ingenuity and ambition” and evidence of a UK company “leading the way in building reliable satellite communications systems for the future.”

The decision also repositions Europe in a crowded and politically sensitive market. Low Earth orbit broadband is currently dominated by SpaceX’s Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb, with several other projects vying for spectrum and funding. Rivada has said it still plans to pursue a constellation using German filings, suggesting European regulators may soon have to coordinate between multiple overlapping systems in similar orbital regimes.

Against that backdrop, Open Cosmos is pitching itself as a pan-European provider of “sovereign” connectivity, with engineering teams in the UK, Spain, Portugal and Greece and a dual focus on Earth-observation and telecom services. The company reported rapid revenue growth in recent years and has raised tens of millions of dollars from investors, but it remains small compared with established global satellite operators, making Thursday’s launch a high-profile test of its ability to scale up.

Rocket Lab’s Electron and a high-altitude delivery

For Rocket Lab, the mission underscores how far Electron has evolved since its first orbital success in 2018. The 18-meter-tall, two-stage rocket, powered by electric pump-fed Rutherford engines and typically topped by a Curie kick stage, was designed to give small satellite operators dedicated access to orbit rather than forcing them to wait for space on larger rideshare missions.

After a gradual ramp-up, Rocket Lab flew 21 Electron missions in 2025, a company record it said came with a 100% mission success rate. The company now operates two orbital pads — the privately owned Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand and Launch Complex 2 at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia — and has marketed Electron as the most frequently launched dedicated small rocket in the world.

Thursday’s flight to roughly 1,050 kilometers, in an orbit inclined about 89 degrees to the equator, is among Electron’s highest-altitude payload deliveries. That near-polar geometry allows satellites to eventually pass over nearly every point on Earth as the planet rotates beneath their path, a desirable characteristic for both global monitoring and communications.

Debris, regulation and the cost of scaling

The choice of a comparatively high orbit carries trade-offs. Satellites at 1,000 kilometers or more can remain in space for decades, which improves coverage stability but increases the importance of collision avoidance and end-of-life disposal to limit long-lived debris. Regulators in Europe and elsewhere have been tightening post-mission disposal expectations, but Open Cosmos has not yet released detailed plans for deorbiting this first pair.

Space environment concerns stand alongside more immediate business questions. Building a full-scale Ka-band constellation will require substantial capital beyond the cost of two test satellites and a single dedicated launch. Open Cosmos has not said when it expects to begin offering commercial services, how many satellites it will ultimately deploy or how its capacity will compare with larger players.

Still, by pairing a rapid spectrum win with a quick turn to orbit, the company has moved the debate over Liechtenstein’s Ka-band filings out of courtrooms and regulatory hearings and into the sky. It has also provided Rocket Lab with another example of how dedicated small launchers are being used not just for one-off demonstrations, but to seed infrastructure that governments and companies increasingly see as strategic.

“These first satellites lay the groundwork for a resilient network designed to support governments, institutions and commercial partners with dependable space infrastructure when it matters most,” Jordà said.

Whether that network can grow fast enough — and responsibly enough — in an already crowded low Earth orbit remains to be seen. For now, two small satellites circling 1,050 kilometers above Earth have given a microstate’s spectrum rights, and a mid-sized British startup’s ambitions, a concrete foothold in space.