Rocket Lab flew 21 missions in 2025 with a 100 percent success rate. Its total launch manifest now exceeds 70 missions and its backlog tops $2.2 billion. Someone has to sell those flights to European customers.
Jenna Herrera is Rocket Lab’s Global Launch Services Manager, responsible for the company’s commercial and international governance and space agency launch portfolios. Her focus is the transatlantic bridge: connecting European institutions and commercial operators with Rocket Lab’s launch infrastructure. Before joining Rocket Lab, Herrera was a Sales and Strategy Manager at Blue Origin, where she led portfolios for commercial customers across LEO and Lunar programs. Earlier, she worked at SBG Systems S.A.S., a French inertial navigation company, gaining direct experience in European cross-cultural business environments. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from San Diego State University.
The career path from a French sensor company to Blue Origin to Rocket Lab traces a widening aperture: from component sales to launch services, from a single market to global portfolios. At Rocket Lab, that aperture now encompasses Electron, HASTE, and the forthcoming Neutron medium-lift vehicle. Electron has become one of the most frequently flown small launch vehicles in the world, with dedicated missions for NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and JAXA. In March 2026, SatNews reported on ESA’s Celeste IOD-1 and IOD-2 satellites lifting off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, a mission built by Thales Alenia Space. In April, Rocket Lab launched the Kakushin Rising mission for JAXA, its second dedicated Japanese flight.
The defense side of the business has scaled in parallel. By February 2026, Rocket Lab had consolidated an $816 million defense backlog following sustained success with the HASTE hypersonic test launch program. In May 2026, the company announced its largest launch contract in history: a multi-launch agreement with a confidential customer for five dedicated Neutron launches and three dedicated Electron launches, baselined for 2026 through 2029.
For European customers evaluating access to orbit, the calculus has shifted. Rocket Lab offers dedicated small launch from New Zealand and Virginia, with Neutron adding medium-lift capability by late 2026. The question that Herrera’s role embodies is whether European institutions will diversify their launch procurement beyond sovereign providers.
At SmallSat Europe, Herrera brings the perspective of a company that has built its manifest one dedicated mission at a time.
The rockets work. The international sales pipeline is where the growth is.
