Great. Thanks for joining us for the afternoon session with Rocket Lab. My name's Eric Rasmussen. I cover the new space area. We have Adam Spice, the company's Chief Financial Officer. The format for today is gonna be fireside chat. I'm gonna start off with some questions, but it, it-- we'd love for this to be get some participation from others in the room if you have questions, so just raise your hand. Well, Adam, thanks for thanks for coming.
Thanks for having us.
Appreciate it. So maybe we just sort of start off with the recent results, Q1. I think you had, you know, very good, strong year-over-year growth, steady gross margins. But maybe just sort of unpack, you know, the, you know, the quarter. Obviously, you're absorbing a lot of costs for, for the Neutron rocket, but maybe just sort of provide some of the highlights for the quarter, if you don't mind.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, so I think, you know, Q1 is showing the strength that we have in the model, where it's a diversified business, right? Where, you know, obviously, when people think of Rocket Lab, they think of rockets, which, you know, makes sense. It's our heritage. And we do have, you know, the most frequently launched, you know, small, dedicated rocket in the market. We've launched it 48 times. We actually have another launch scheduled for this evening, where we're launching the second NASA payload in about, I guess, less than two weeks. So it'll be our third launch in the quarter.
In our guidance, we pointed to four launches in the quarter, with potential for a fifth, but you know, four was the baseline in our guide. Launch represents about a third of our revenue, maybe a little bit less than that right now, with space systems making up the remaining element of our revenue. So if you think of our business in two segments, you've got the launch segment, which is about a third, space systems, which is about two-thirds. You know, within launch, again, we have the Electron launch vehicle that's launching today and that's driving all the revenue there.
But we're deep in the development cycle of a new larger launch vehicle that'll compete directly with the Falcon 9, called Neutron, and that's currently scheduled to launch its kind of first test launch in the middle of next year. So, as you pointed out, I mean, that's—it's driving our financials to a pretty significant degree because it's just a huge project. You know, when we came public back in August of 2021, we said, you know, Neutron was gonna be roughly a three-year development program and cost between 200 and 300, 200 million and 300 million dollars. And right now, we're kind of still in that ballpark. We're looking right now we're still targeting an overall program cost of around a little under $300 million.
So it's a huge undertaking. It really does create a lot of distortions in the P& L because that first test rocket is all just flowing through R& D, right? So it's really the model, you know, will change quite a bit once we get kind of our first paying customer on that vehicle. Then you get the benefit of, you know, absorbing those costs into COGS and then amortizing a lot of the overhead that you've built to enable not only Electron, but Neutron as well. So a lot of good things happen when we start to launch Neutron with paying customers again, which, you know, right now, first test launch, middle of next year. First paying customer, you know, likely gonna be within six months of that, with anticipation.
Great. And then maybe just, you know, sticking with sort of like a general view of the business, but sort of the demand environment.
You mentioned sort of the split, one-third Neutron, or one-third Electron, which is your current launch rocket today, and then two-thirds space systems, but maybe sort of just break out where you're seeing demand for either.
Yeah, there's very strong demand for both. You know, when you look at the Electron launch business, that's really, you know, we've, we've got a pretty deep backlog. We have about $200 million of Electron backlog as we speak. Of our $1 billion of backlog, roughly, you know, $200 million of that is launch. The remainder is on the space system side, which we'll talk about in a little more detail. So you can think of launch as being generally a pretty lumpy business. It's dependent upon customers delivering their payloads to us on time in order for us to meet our targets for each quarter and for the year. So I would say that, you know, it's one of those businesses where you, for...
If you look at revenue recognition for launch, although you're collecting cash against milestones as you progress towards the launch, you actually don't recognize revenue until you actually hit the intentional ignition to launch the payload for the customer. On the space system side of the business, it's quite a bit more predictable. I think it'll become increasingly predictable, you know, as we get some of these larger programs really kind of going in a meaningful way. You know, for example, of the $800 million in backlog at the end of Q2, sorry, Q1, about the $800 million of space systems, probably $650 million of that $800 million is tied to large programs.
So for example, the biggest piece of that is a $515 million contract that we won with the Pentagon to do to support the SDA program, where we're the prime contractor for that. So I would say that the demand drivers, you know, there's a lot of demand and not a lot of people to compete with us on the Electron side of things because people that have tried to compete on the small, dedicated launch side have largely failed. We've seen public examples of that with, you know, the Astra and the Virgin Orbit, and then there's kind of similar situations in the private markets with small people who've tried to the small launchers that have tried to enter that market.
On the space system side, I would say that we're, you know, there's more, there's more competition on the space system side.
Mm-hmm.
There, we deal with, you know, building full spacecraft solutions like we are for SDA. You're competing against large existing primes, with the likes of Lockheed, Northrop, L3, and so forth. You also have some smaller, satellite manufacturers in there, the likes of Terran and so forth, that are really subs to the larger government primes. So I'd say demand is probably, you know, equally robust. It just has different characteristics. Again, more lumpy versus predictable, and the space system side really has a bigger TAM that you can kind of tap into, which, you know, with even within that space systems business, we have a combination of kind of ship and bill type of, you know, subsystems. And then we have more of the, you know, over time rev rec, large systems or subsystems in place, like with our solar business.
And then, of course, you've got the much larger programs, when you're delivering an entire satellite. But demand is very strong across all of our segments right now.
Great. And then maybe we'll stick within the space systems business. You know, maybe just talk about the order momentum. Obviously, you have right now you're in the middle of the MDA Globalstar program, but maybe just sort of talking about the types of deals you're working on. And then just, if you can, you know, update us on the progress of where you stand right now with Globalstar.
Yeah, so we, you know, we continue to move up the food chain, going from we were the subcontractor to provide the bus to MDA for the Globalstar constellation. With the SDA, with the Pentagon, we ended up being the prime. So we provide not only the bus, which for us is our own bus, with a lot of vertically integrated supply of subsystems, and then we also procure the payload from third parties. And we've announced who some of those parties are that are providing payload capabilities for us. And on the MDA Globalstar progress, so this year is one of-- that's one of the bigger revenue contributors.
We were anticipating or are anticipating, you know, about $100 million of revenue from that program on a total of a $150 million award that was announced a couple years ago. And because really, the most of the revenue gets recognized as we start to put these satellites through their you know, assembly, integration, and test, and start to deliver hardware to the customers, in this case, MDA Globalstar. So I would say that, you know, things are, I would say, it was our first major constellation award, so kind of there's been a little bit of fits and starts, and there was also some funding challenges of Globalstar early on in that program.
But I would say things have nicely come into focus, and, you know, we expect to continue to deliver under that program, with the majority of the hardware being delivered, you know, either by the end of this year or early 2025.
Okay, and that's that $100 million in reference of the $143 million of the contract?
Correct.
That'll be throughout the year, and you're probably more so second half weighted or towards the end of the year?
Yeah, it'll peak in either Q3 or Q4 in its contribution, but it's significant. It was significant in Q1. It'll be significant every quarter this year, but yeah, it'll be growing as we progress.
Okay
... through Q2 or Q3.
And then final delivery is expected?
Yeah, I mean, we're already in a position to start delivering hardware. I believe we may have already shipped a couple of the satellite buses or parts of those satellite buses to the customer. But yeah, I believe all of the hardware really should be delivered kind of before the end of the first half of 2025.
Okay, and then that revenue stream will fall off, and then obviously then, you're going to have the SDA award, which is $515 million, where you're acting as the prime there.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe just talk about some of the milestones on that as we think of that award as it progresses through the year.
Yeah, so these programs are pretty typical, whether it's, you know, a large commercial or a government program, where, you know, you make your proposal, you're awarded, and then you go through a series of engineering milestones. So you go through your CDR, PDR, different ways where you get... And the customer is doing a final buy-off on the system-level requirements and how you're solving the requirements to get, you know, in hardware and software. And you basically, you know, we recognize revenue under large contracts like that under what's called EAC, or estimated cost to completion. So essentially, if you think about a program that has, let's say, just make some rough numbers here.
Let's say it's a $500 million program with 30% of forecasted, you know, non-GAAP gross margin, and so that would indicate you probably have around $350 million of cost. So as you're realizing costs against that total estimated cost of $350 million, you're recognizing revenue and gross margin at that kind of program level. So it's all about kind of getting through some of the key design reviews, but that's not where the majority of the money is spent. The money is really spent when you start procuring hardware and you start assembling spacecraft. So typically, you'd see a program that would start off relatively modestly, and then it would peak as you're going to start delivering hardware.
That particular program will be delivering satellites, kind of, you know, by end of 2026, kind of early 2027.
Okay, that, and then the program, technically, those are supposed to launch sometime in the 2027 time frame.
Correct. Yeah, launch has not been awarded for those spacecraft yet. So that's again, where our whole model, where we're bringing this larger vehicle to market, you know, Neutron, that, you know, ideally will be, you know, eligible to kind of throw its hat in the ring to, to not only, you know, build, we're building the spacecraft, but also potentially launching it as well.
Okay. You can, it sounded like from the call, you're going to have some revenues this year from the SDA.
Yep.
What is that in reference to? And it, I'm assuming that's a smaller percentage, and that's probably more back half weighted.
Yeah, that's correct. I mean, we had a tiny little sliver of revenue recognized in Q1 against that contract, but I'd say kind of insignificant. That'll grow as we progress through 2024, and become, you know, meaningful in 2025. And obviously, 2026 is where you'll have the majority of kind of that revenue recognized, I'd say 2025, 2026, and early 2027. So really, the model here is to continue building the backlog with those, you know, those meaty, kind of big contracts. 'Cause we moved from you know, we, before we got MDA Globalstar, we had some smaller contracts, where we were building kind of one-off or maybe onesie-twosies for for NASA and other customers. And then we basically got our first small constellation order for a company called Varda Space that was doing in-space pharmaceutical manufacturing.
And then we transitioned that up to our first major constellation, which was the MDA Globalstar, which was, like you said, $143 million. Then we followed up with more than 3.5 times bigger with the SDA contract. And we're continuing to put our, you know, our, our oars in the water on, on similarly sized or larger program opportunities. So the goal is to continue building that backlog, and we've been successful in more than doubling our backlog year-over-year for the last several years. So I think our goal would be, you know, the same as, you know, try to double backlog if we can, you know, in 2024 over 2023, and, you know, continue that momentum. And as you do that, especially with these larger-...
These larger programs that really starts to de-risk your out-year revenue forecast, even, you know, two, three years out, right? Which is a very nice place to be.
Right. Maybe then, you know, if we could talk about the backlog.
Mm-hmm.
Sounds like there's a lot of opportunities you're tracking. You haven't announced anything yet, but it sounds like the team is working on a lot of opportunities.
Mm-hmm.
How does that, you know, could it be sort of the same progression that we saw where MDA, you sort of put your toe in the water, and it was a great opportunity? It sort of validated yourselves more so than what you've already done. But then the SDA really got you as a prime contractor. Is that sort of the level of types of opportunities and even greater that you're looking at?
Yeah, I mean, those are exactly the types of opportunities. And, I mean, now that once you kind of are in that club of, you know, government prime contractors, a lot of doors start to be open for you, that weren't there before. So there's a lot of, you know, classified work that we're, that we're pursuing. And again, just kind of if you look at a program like, like SDA, there's lots of tranches to come. It's a very big program, many billions of dollars. So it's now just a matter of kind of, you know, exceeding your customer's expectations on the first bite of the apple, and then hopefully, you know, good things come from that.
On the commercial side, there are other large commercial constellation opportunities that we're also pursuing, so we're not just, you know, solely focused on U.S. government business. But there are other kind of commercial and foreign government opportunities outside of the U.S. government. So yeah, all of it kind of starts to build on itself. And we've been very fortunate. You know, I just passed my six-year anniversary with the company, and we were pre-revenue. And now to kind of be looking at the kind of programs that we've won and the very kind of bold programs that we're undertaking, like developing Neutron, I mean, the business has come much further than I'd even expected only a few years ago.
It sounds like things have accelerated, and it's also accelerated because you've also demonstrated success.
Yeah, it's. I mean, look, space is hard, right? So we, you know, got quite a bit of, you know, feedback when we slipped our Neutron schedule by a couple quarters, when we did our Q1 call. And, you know, we're as frustrated as anybody with that kind of a slip. But in the grand scheme of things, when you look at, you know, programs that are, you know, in some cases, you know, more than half a decade late, and we start talking about a couple quarters on such a challenging program as something like building a Neutron launch vehicle. It's, you know...
Again, it's unfortunate, but it's not completely kind of out of school, if you will, with kind of what's in. In fact, when executing a program like this, we're doing things that have never been done before. So building a 13-ton launch vehicle from scratch, you know, within three or four years for, you know, $300 million, I mean, that was never even contemplated as being possible. I mean, you look at the people that are trying to do similar things for orders of magnitude more capital. So it kind of goes to our whole capital-efficient model, where we do things differently 'cause we have to.
'Cause when you wake up every day, and not only is your core business, you know, fighting physics to put stuff on orbit, but, you know, also competing with the likes of, of, you know, SpaceX and Blue Origin and ULA, and you're competing with people that have way, way deeper pockets than we do. So we have to do things differently. And, you know, kind of just, it permeates everything that we do in the company to try to be capital efficient and just, you know, kind of outmaneuver our competition versus kind of out-capitalizing them, 'cause we'll never do that.
Right. Right. Any commonalities between the Globalstar MDA and sort of how you can apply that towards SDA and, you know, think about the leverage of the technology, but also then where the, you know, margins settle, MDA versus SDA? You know, where do those settle?
Actually, there's a lot of commonality. We put a lot of, we had to kind of establish a base of IP to, you know, for this Globalstar MDA opportunity, and we're leveraging a tremendous amount of that on the SDA program. And as we put our proposals in for other rounds of SDA and other opportunity, we'll continue to leverage that IP portfolio. But it was a, you know, it was a, we've gone through, obviously, you know better than anyone, how tough these equity markets have been. So to kind of have two, really kind of two major R&D programs going on, you know, one, of course, you're developing this key, fundamental, you know, space systems capabilities, and also developing Neutron at the same time.
I mean, it was a very difficult, continues to be a very difficult thing to do in the, in the kind of capital markets that we face. But, you know, we believe it's the right thing to do to kind of position the company to, to deliver some—I think we're gonna be really attractive returns, but we kind of got to get through this, this investment cycle.
Right.
That also kind of informed our, you know, our. You look at the convert that we raised in February of this year, we raised $355 million. I mean, a lot of that capital is really earmarked to go do things to help drive the business to grow faster, so a lot of inorganic things. And we see a tremendous amount of opportunity out there in ways that we can grow the business faster and ultimately, you know, get to our end strategic goal of being a true end-to-end space provider, where, you know, we can design spacecraft, we can manufacture those spacecraft in a very vertically integrated nature with all the subsystems that we build in-house. We can launch those satellites either on Electron or on Neutron.
We can operate them on orbit, 'cause we do that today for customers, but then ultimately own our own assets on orbit, and create a recurring revenue stream off of those assets. And we've seen the power in that model, you know, as you know, as illustrated by SpaceX, right? What they've done with Starlink. You know, Starlink wouldn't be what it is today if they didn't have a launch vehicle, and specifically a reusable launch vehicle that really brings the economics into focus. So, you know, we think having a launch capability is an imperative. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do. You know, maybe there's two handfuls of organizations in history that have developed reliable launch vehicles, and we're now one of those.
So if you have that capability, you're in a very strong position to go exercise applications on orbit that you think are particularly attractive, because you've got something that other people that you compete with don't have, which is, again, access to space.
Right. Margins, it's pretty similar?
So, you know, margins on the programs are in the same ballpark. I mean, if you kind of think about, you know, if you look at our space systems business, there's a components business where we sell components and subsystems into other spacecraft manufacturers. People like, you know, customers include Lockheed and Northrop and Airbus and other people like that. And, you know, we have a portfolio that can have anywhere between, you know, kind of call it sub-30%-70% gross margins. On the space system side of things, it's, you know, I'd say historically, people that are priming satellite missions would be very happy with high single-digit, low double-digit gross profit margin. You know, we're different than that.
Our aspirations are more towards the 30% or higher gross margin range for those, and we're able to target those because we're so much more vertically integrated than a lot of our competition. So it eliminates a lot of the margin stacking that can drag down the margins for people that don't have those subsystem capabilities in-house.
Great. And then, we haven't—I don't think you've talked about SolAero in any sort of detail in a little bit, but where do we stand with SolAero? Obviously, that was an acquisition you made a couple of years ago, strategic in nature for the solar cells and panels, but you talked about a 30% sort of margin. Where are we at now, and what's the time frame on getting there, maybe?
So when we acquired that business, in early 2022, it came with a, you know, about $150 million of backlog. Around 100 of that 150 came from one particularly margin-challenged program. And I would say that we're significantly through that program, but there's still more, you know, revenue that we've got to kind of flush through the system on that. And that basically it was a lost contract, you know, that was something that was put in place, again, before we acquired the company. And so what we'd like to do is, you know, there's been progress made on getting that gross margin up. When we acquired it, it was in the kind of high single digits.
Now, it's more solidly in the, in kind of, call it in the mid-teens, kind of, on, on - when you look at it on a blended basis. But all the new business that we've, that we've really closed in the last, I would say, two years, that's all come in at or above our target 30%+ gross margin range. And we've accomplished that, you know, through, you know, getting more efficiency by investing in the, like, new reactors that are more efficient than the ones that were in place prior to the acquisition. So we're kind of rebuilding the fleet of reactors, we're putting more automation in place, we're bringing our costs down, which is helping obviously on the margin side.
But we've also exercised, we think, quite a bit of incremental discipline on pricing and how we enter these long-term strategic supply agreements with these large, you know, prime contractors who are much more comfortable operating in the low margin, cost- plus regime. We're not that. We're a Firm Fixed- Price, you know, provider, and, you know, we kind of, you know, we have very set targets of what our gross margins should be to return, you know, kind of reasonable returns for our shareholders.
Great. Maybe we just pivot over to launch.
Mm-hmm.
You have a you think you did 48, so far, launches on the Electron rocket. You're the second most frequently launched provider. You created the separation, and we've seen a lot of these small launchers wash out in the industry. But you have, so far, you've launched two. Maybe just sort of lay out the, you know, the remainder of this quarter, which launches you have on the docket, and then sort of how the year shapes up. I know you had talked about lowering potentially the initial guidance, but maybe just talk about how the year shapes out.
Yeah. So we launched 10 missions last year. This year, we came into the year with a manifest of 22. We have seen some, like we always do, we see some manifest kind of, I'd say, kind of, whack-a-mole going on, where, you know, customers will be late showing up with their payloads. And so, you know, we can only launch a rocket when the customer shows up with a payload that's ready to go. And I'd say, look, all the customers unanimously want to get their, their assets on orbit as quickly as possible, but, you know, they really don't know till they go through their final kind of acceptance testing, where you put the spacecraft in a, in a TVAC and, and vibe environment and see, you know, if, if something bad happens during those final tests.
When they do, it doesn't result in, like, a two-week shift. It results in months or quarters because they have to, you know, they have to deintegrate the spacecraft, you know, remediate the issue, and then reassemble, retest. So it creates quite a bit of volatility. So, you know, what you have is you have some missions basically that slip to the right. Occasionally, you'll get something that'll kind of pull in to the left. But for the most part, you know, there is some leakage that goes from period to period as customers underestimate the time it'll take for them to deliver their spacecraft to us, and that affects our manifest. So coming into the year at 22 launch is kind of confirmed on the manifest.
That's gonna be a number that's, you know, in all likelihood, below 20, you know, this year's comes down. You know, it's really difficult to say with any precision even now, you know, whether that number ends up being, you know, 17, 18, 19, 20 launches. But it's kind of in that, it's kind of in that range, is kind of where we currently see it. This quarter, we have launched twice. Hopefully, the third one goes off this evening, and then we've got another one teed up for. I think it's another week or so, from now. So it's a pretty busy manifest, but, you know, fortunately for us, we have three launch pads for Electron.
Mm-hmm.
We've got two in New Zealand, we've got one in Wallops Island, Virginia. So it gives us the ability to launch relatively quickly. We've done as quickly as, I think, eight days of separation, and I'm not sure that that even is kind of a hard limit for us. Because we can pivot pretty quickly from. Now that we have multiple launch mounts, for example, New Zealand, so forth.
Right. And then you mentioned the possibility for a fifth, but at this point, where we're at right now, is that sort of not likely? And that's obviously not, it's not in the guidance, but, you know, you talked about that as...
You know, as soon as we can get that payload in our hands, we'll, we'll kind of try to get it off as quickly as we can. So I just think we're out of, you know, I'd say, out of our experience now that we're starting, you know, we've been doing this a while now, and you can start to generate some pattern recognition, and we just, you know, we don't want to get too far over our skis on estimating, you know, launches in a quarter. So we feel very comfortable with the four that we gave with our guidance. The fifth kind of still remains on the bubble.
Okay. Maybe just on launch pricing, I think it's bounced around a little bit, and that's just because of sort of mix that you have, but where is the pricing today, and you know, how have they progressed, and how do you see that sort of in the next 12 or 24 months?
Yeah, so we've got customers where I would say a pretty wide range on pricing. And a lot of it is really dependent upon how much, like, for example, how much handholding the customer needs, how much mission assurance they require. And when I say mission assurance, it means like, you know, how much support does a customer require before they sign off on the launch, right? Like, some customers, let's say, for example, you know, a national security mission, where it's a high-value payload, they wanna make sure that there's all the, you know, everything's been checked and double-checked and triple-checked, and they require special security on the range and so forth. So a lot of that stuff kind of influences price.
Our average selling price is around $7.5 million for an Electron, but I would say that, you know, you've got, you know, people that can be, you know, I wouldn't say significantly, but somewhat below that number, and then you can have customers that are significantly above that number. We've got, we've got large customers where they're significantly north of, say, $12 million, $13 million, right, for a launch. Again, based on those unique requirements. Of course, you know, we're very much looking forward to getting Neutron to the pad, where, you know, average selling prices, we anticipate, are more like, you know, $50-$55 million per launch. So it becomes much, much more meaty and chunky additions to backlog, and plus just, you know, the kind of revenue uplift that comes from that.
So I'd say the pricing environment for launch right now has been pretty firm. I mean, we've been increasing pricing every year. I would say that a couple of years ago, when we were booking multi-launch deals, we had to go fairly deep on discount from our target $7 million-$7.5 million at the time. Now, we're kind of looking at multi-launch, larger multi-launch deals that are coming at, at much kind of closer to the pin. We're having to discount less from our kind of single launch, kind of target pricing. So I think that's very comforting. So I think, you know, pricing, pricing has been very supportive. I think what's helped that also is the fact that, you know, our mix, where we've now introduced a new product into our portfolio called HASTE, which is our...
Using Electron as a hypersonic test platform. You know, that's an example, again, where the mission requires a lot more mission assurance and a lot more kind of, I would say, additional services than a traditional just commercial launch would be. You're not just launching a satellite, you're basically deploying, you know, a payload and doing a lot more for that mission than just kind of, again, launching somebody else's stuff into orbit. You're. There's a lot more that goes on into those kind of missions, and so we charge accordingly for that.
Right. And maybe just sort of coming up on the, on the timing, I wanted to— You mentioned HASTE. That was gonna be, I think, one of my questions. But if we're thinking about Neutron and the delay you saw now, and I appreciate that you put it in perspective of so the other rocket programs that we've seen multiyear delays, and even Starliner still hasn't gotten up there.
Mm-hmm.
What has that done in terms of, like, where you sit positioned for things like, you know, the NSSL? You know, and also, where you think you're gonna be positioned to be bringing a rocket at a time when the market really needs sort of that medium launcher.
Yeah. Well, look, I, I think if you talk to the customer base out there, they'd say that, that, Neutron's probably a few, few years late versus what they would like to see. So of course, you know, we had to gain access to the capital and kind of earn our way into, into going from, you know, small dedicated launch to this medium launch category. But if, if you look right now, there's actually a very significant imbalance between supply and demand for launch. You know, SpaceX has the vast majority of the market share today. You know, to their credit, I mean, tremendous execution, and they're the vehicle that's, that was, you know, needed for national security and everything else.
I think that when you look across a range of, you know, government customers, they need, you know, multiplicity, right? They need more than one supplier. The NSSL program is a path to do that. You know, we were originally anticipating to be on ramp this year, but with the delays, the schedule, that pushes out to next year. But we think when the vehicle's ready, there'll be a very receptive customer in the form of the U.S. government, and even to the point where they've invested, you know, significant money in helping us develop the vehicle to meet their needs. So we had a $24 million kind of, you know, investment from the Space Force to help develop that upper stage of that vehicle.
So they're very, very motivated to bring more competition and more capacity to the market. 'Cause right now, if you look at between, you know, the new vehicle coming from ULA, the Vulcan, it's late. You know, it's not, it's not currently on its intended schedule. Northrop Grumman's Antares rocket was retired from the market because it had its dependence on the Russian-Ukrainian engines. So really, it's potentially a handful of providers into this, into this market for both national security and commercial launch. And we're now kind of one of that elite club of people that are able to, you know, deliver against need, the needs there.
So I think, you know, the commercial market might even be more constrained, because if you think about, you know, programs that compete with Starlink, they're probably feeling a little bit nervous that they're having to rely on their competitor for access to space, right? With Falcon 9. So I think that, you know, once Neutron comes into market, there's gonna be a lot of people that'll be able to breathe a little bit easier, you know, including U.S. government customer and commercial customers.
Right. Well, we've run out of time, but I appreciate, Adam, you joining us today, and we look forward to more updates from you guys.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Thanks. Thank you.