SALISBURY, Md. — With a projected surge in launches from Wallops Island, Virginia, in the coming years, companies and local officials say now is the time to invest in infrastructure improvements to benefit those companies and their workers.
A theme of discussions during an industry day for NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on Aug. 12 was the expectation that the number of launches from Wallops will grow significantly in the next few years as companies such as Firefly Aerospace and Rocket Lab ramp up operations there.
“If we all get our way, we’re going to be going from a couple of orbital launches out of here a year to maybe one a week,” said Coleman McCord, director of launch site development at Firefly Aerospace. The company plans to launch both its small Alpha rocket and medium-class Eclipse vehicle from Wallops starting as soon as 2027.
A report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General in June predicted that the number of launches from Wallops, including those from pads owned by the Virginia Spaceport Authority, would grow from 17 in 2025 to 44 in 2030. That includes suborbital launches of sounding rockets and Rocket Lab’s HASTE, a suborbital version of its Electron small launch vehicle.
