On 23 April, Exolaunch successfully deployed eight customer satellites for the Kakushin Rising mission with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) aboard Rocket Lab's Electron, following liftoff from Launch Complex 1 in Māhia, New Zealand.

JAXA is conducting the Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration-4 mission, providing on-orbit demonstration opportunities for Japanese universities, research institutes, and private companies. The payload includes educational smallsats, an ocean monitoring satellite, a demonstration satellite for ultra-small multispectral cameras, and an antenna that can be packed tightly using innovative origami folding techniques then unfurl to 25 times its size when deployed.

Exolaunch provided its EXOpod Nova deployment technologies under a dedicated hardware and integration services contract for the following satellites:

• FSI-SAT2 for the Future Science Institute

• MAGNARO-Ⅱ for Nagoya University

• KOSEN-2R for the National Institute of Technology

• ARICA-2 for Aoyama Gakuin University

• WASEDA-SAT-ZERO-Ⅱ for Waseda University

• Mono-Nikko for Di-Nikko Engineering

• OrigamiSat-2 for the Institute of Science Tokyo

• PRELUDE for Nihon University

This was the 46th mission in the company's flight heritage.

• Mission

  Kakushin Rising

• Launch vehicle

  Electron

• Launch site

  Māhia, Launch Complex 1

• Launch date

  April 23, 2026