Vector Planning First Orbital Launch in July from Alaska, Not Virginia

Jeff Foust, for SpaceNews:

The Tucson, Arizona-based company announced its launch plans in a Feb. 14 press release announcing that a customer had placed a reservation of five launches of the company’s Vector-R small launch vehicle. The statement said only the company’s first orbital launch was planned for July. A company spokesperson told SpaceNews said the launch location and any customers for that mission were still to be determined.

However, in a talk Feb. 15 at the Canadian SmallSat Symposium here, Jim Cantrell, co-founder and chief executive of Vector, disclosed that the inaugural Vector-R orbital launch would take place from “Kodiak,” a reference to the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska, formerly known as the Kodiak Launch Complex on Alaska’s Kodiak Island.

…

A flight from Alaska represents a change in plans from what the company announced just a few months earlier. On Oct. 19 the company said it had an agreement with the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority to perform its three launches from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at Wallops Island over the next two years. At that time Cantrell said the first orbital flights would take place from Wallops.

I’m still generally skeptical about Vector after the past year or two of mostly empty calories of the PR variety.

But there’s another thing about this announcement: it further shows the relative uselessness of Wallops.

Given there were never any customers announced for the flights from Virginia, I highly doubt they’ll still fly those missions.