Rocket Lab plans to fly Electron's 100th mission, named The Mountain God Rises, no earlier than Saturday, Nov. 14, from Launch Complex 1, carrying a QPS-SAR satellite for Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space to a 575-kilometer low Earth orbit, the company said on X.

In a Nov. 5 post on X, Rocket Lab said The Mountain God Rises will carry a QPS-SAR satellite for iQPS to a 575-kilometer low Earth orbit from Launch Complex 1 no earlier than Saturday, Nov. 14. iQPS identified the payload as QPS-SAR-19, named YAMATSUMI-II, and said it is scheduled aboard Electron on that mission. Rocket Lab's mission page says the flight will deploy the latest QPS-SAR satellite for iQPS and its Earth-imaging constellation.

A long-exposure trail of an Electron launch from Launch Complex 1, photographed from Nūhaka, New Zealand, during the CAPSTONE mission.
A long-exposure trail of an Electron launch from Launch Complex 1, photographed from Nūhaka, New Zealand, during the CAPSTONE mission. Yourong F. Wang · CC BY-SA 4.0

Rocket Lab says it is the primary launcher for iQPS's commercial synthetic aperture radar constellation, which the company describes as being built to deliver high-resolution, near-real-time imagery to users worldwide. The company's mission page frames Electron reaching 100 launches as a threshold rarely crossed for a commercial small-lift orbital rocket. iQPS aims to field 24 QPS-SAR satellites by May 2028 and more by 2030 so it can observe specific regions almost anywhere in the world at an average interval of about 10 minutes, the company said.