Rocket Lab’s stellar trajectory

[As published in September/October BayBuzz magazine.]

Kiwi-led space industry pioneer Rocket Lab is a high flier in every conceivable way, notching up successive wins in satellite deployment enhancing the future of communications, environmental science and defence. 

Rocket Lab’s meteoric rise following a test launch from Mahia Peninsula 18 years ago has put New Zealand on the global star map sending impressive payloads into orbit for governments, environmental advocates and multinational giants. 

It was named company of the year at the May 2024 Hi-Tech Awards and within weeks had launched twin rockets on a NASA mission to map polar heat loss, celebrated 180 satellites in orbit and the deployment of its 50th Electron rocket. 

In July Rocket Lab launched the fifth of 16 Electron launches for Japanese radar imaging and earth observation company Synspective to detect millimetre-level changes to earth’s surface. Another is planned before the end of the year. Rocket Lab also built and tested twin satellites for an 11-month NASA mission to Mars to measure plasma and magnetic fields in the Martian upper atmosphere which launched from Cape Canaveral in August. 

Meanwhile it has signed its biggest contract ever with Synspective for ten more payloads of its StriX synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites for near real-time disaster management and other applications to go into orbit between 2025 to 2027. 

Founder and CEO Peter Beck was made a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (KNZM) in the King’s Birthday Honours list for services to the space industry. 

In 2018-2019 Deloitte estimated the space industry had returned $1.75 billion to the New Zealand economy and was on a sharp upward trajectory. 

Rocket Lab spacecraft contracts to mid-2025 alone are valued at over $500m. Meanwhile it is investing around $US250 million to compete with the likes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin with its Neutron rocket due for testing “no earlier than mid-2025”. 

The global space economy, according to various sources, will allegedly treble in value from $US630 billion in 2023 trending toward an astronomical $US1.8 trillion by 2035. 

Low-cost launches 

Sir Peter’s vision is to make the process of launching smaller and heavier payload satellites more affordable and to make it easier “to do incredible things to benefit billions of people on Earth” as he pushes deeper into space from space. He says there are incredible opportunities for New Zealand. 

Rocket Lab added a second Mahia launchpad in 2022 and began an expansion into Australia in 2023. Electron, the second commercial rocket to reach orbit by 2018, is today the second most frequently launched rocket in the world. 

Beck says New Zealand’s launch capability is the envy of many other countries. “It’s no exaggeration to say that countries like Australia and Scotland are spending millions and millions trying to catch up with what we already have.” 

We’re the fourth most prolific launch provider in the world, “after the US, China, Russia it’s Mahia.” 

Compelled to propel 

Beck entered the workplace as a tool and dye engineer at Fisher & Paykel in Auckland in the 90s. In pursuit of his propulsion passion he invented a rocket bike and jet pack before purchasing a cruise missile engine from the US to experiment with. 

He was supported by future investor Stephen Tindall to visit international space industry operations and after founding Rocket Lab in 2006, he’s now a venture capitalist encouraging innovation. 

If our engineers and entrepreneurs can be successful in the global space industry, “we can be successful at anything”. 

Through global investment and acquisition Nasdaq-listed Rocket Lab USA, Inc., is today a multi-billion dollar ($US2.2 billion) design and build company offering every conceivable service to the space industry and its clients. 

It’s funded by 15 investors including Trinity Capital and the US Space Force with headquarters in Long Beach California and launch facilities at the southern tip of Mahia Peninsula (Complex 1) and Wallops Island Virginia (Complex 2). 

It has manufacturing and mission operations in Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado, Maryland, Toronto and a satellite manufacturing and assembly factory in Auckland. 

The company, not expected to make a profit until sometime in 2025, has close to 2,000 employees, half based in New Zealand. Beck who retains a 10% shareholding entered the New Zealand Rich List at an estimated $600 milllion in June 2024. 

Expanding orbits 

Rocket Lab’s cosmic aspirations began with the sub-orbital test launch of Atea-1 in 2009 making it the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to do so, essentially forcing the creation of the New Zealand Space Agency in 2016. 

The Ministry of Business Innovation and Enterprise (MBIE) agency has legal responsibility for space policy and regulation including permits and licences for rocket payloads, launches and launch facilities. 

The first Electron launch in 2018 deployed two satellites and since then Rocket Lab has completed numerous small communications, surveillance and climate and weather-focused satellite missions, the majority on behalf of NASA. “We have an excellent track record of delivering NASA’s payloads to exactly where they need to go when they need to go,” says Beck. 

Rocket Lab delivered the Capstone mission to the moon in June 2022, collecting data to inform future explorations, including the proposed moon orbiting space station. 

There were dual Electron missions in May 2023 releasing four satellites for the Tropics mission, monitoring how tropical cyclones and hurricanes are formed to improve predictive models. That month New Zealand introduced its National Space Policy, positioning the country as an attractive place for launches, manufacturing space-related technology, conducting space science and research … and protecting and advancing national security and economic concerns. 

Solar-powered sails 

Rocket Lab’s contracts kept coming. The Starling mission in July put technology in orbit to test the ability of spacecraft to fly in synchronised swarms while collecting science data with no need for ground resources. 

In April 2024 it launched a South Korean Earth-observation satellite and NASA’s Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) testing ways to replace rocket propellent with solar propulsion systems for deep space missions. 

In June twin Prefire (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) CubeSats with far-infrared wavelength sensors lifted off from Mahia on a 10-month mission to measure heat loss near the Arctic and Antarctica. ‘Ready, Aim, Prefire’ and ‘Prefire and Ice’ have 525km low earth orbit trajectories, overlapping every few hours, monitoring sea level and weather changes to help improve climate and ice models. 

According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, the Arctic has warmed more than 2.5 times faster than the rest of the planet, with roughly 60% of the energy that’s released into space not measured efficiently.

Milestone mission 

After Surefire it was rapid fire with Rocket Lab celebrating 180 satellite deliveries and its 50th Electron launch at the end of June – “a rare feat in the history of spaceflight”. This ‘milestone mission’ was the first of five in a constellation of 25 nanosats (30kg-class) for French Internet-of-Things (IoT) company Kinéis. 

The ‘No Time Toulouse’ mission, backed by private and public investors including the French government’s space agency, promises guaranteed transmission of specific data in near-real time to enhance global hi-tech connectivity. 

It will also enable automatic identification systems (AIS) for ship tracking, eventually scaling up to connect millions of IoT devices across multiple industries.

Monitoring methane

Earlier in 2024 Rocket Lab helped establish the Mission Operations Control Centre (MOCC) at Auckland University in partnership with America’s Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) as part of its MethaneSAT project.

BayBuzz publisher Tom Belford, who had worked with EDF as communications and marketing chief – “his last honest employment” before coming to New Zealand – was instrumental in brokering this 2019 deal with the New Zealand Government. 

With Rocket Lab gaining global credibility and the New Zealand Space Agency in place it was deemed timely to take on the MethaneSAT project with the government prepared to invest $26 million in the climate science collaboration. 

MethaneSAT LLC is funded by EDF donors including the Bezos Earth Fund, Arnold Ventures, the Robertson Foundation and the TED Audacious Project alongside scientists from multiple universities and space agencies.

The state-of-the-art spectrometer technology can sense, measure, map and track methane from oil and gas facilities, landfill and agricultural sources, to inform local and international governmental policy. 

“It’s a big deal and good politics for New Zealand to get involved in this major international partnership,” says Belford. “This is the most sensitive satellite built to fly over and spot methane emissions from industrial facilities, as well as agricultural methane emissions right down to the feedlot level.” 

MethaneSAT was launched from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California in March 2024 aboard Elon Musk’s SpaceX Transporter 10. 

Methane mission control

New Zealand’s role is running the MOCC, established by Rocket Lab, to develop, maintain and operate the spacecraft software and systems and train operators at University of Auckland’s Te Pūnaha Ātea-Auckland Space Institute.

The operators track the satellite, manage its position and work through international ground-tracking stations to collect and share data with MethaneSAT’s climate change scientists and researchers. 

The data harvested from around 50 major global regions will ‘validate and refine’ and be evaluated alongside data already gathered by Methane Air jet flights since August 2021. 

MethaneSAT is now circling the Earth 15 times a day measuring changes in concentrations as small as three parts per billion. Rocket Lab will hand over mission control to Te Pūnaha Ātea later this year.

A number of New Zealand groups plan to make good use of the monitoring data when it’s made freely available toward the end of 2024. Interactive emissions data will be made public at no cost from www.MethaneSAT.org and on Google Earth Engine, a premier geospatial data platform used by over 100,000 experts and analysts.

Dr Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher of NIWA (National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research), heading a team of leading atmospheric science and remote sensing researchers, will use the results to measure agriculture emissions.

They’re working alongside Catalyst: Strategic, a New Zealand-China joint research partnership, using models developed to interpret the data and determine the best locations to focus on. 

Dr Mikaloff-Fletcher says New Zealand is the perfect test ground as it has an unusual greenhouse gas profile and world class greenhouse gas measurement and modelling capability. 

NIWA’s atmospheric observing site at Lauder, near Alexandra, one of two Total Column Carbon Observing Network sites, is considered “the gold standard for validating greenhouse gas observing satellites”. 

The local science team will also work on oil and gas sector emissions alongside researchers from Harvard University and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory as part of the MethaneSAT research.

Crowded skies

As at May 2024 there were more than 10,000 active satellites in various earth orbits for communication, earth observation, technology development, navigation and space science. Among them 6,000 Starlink comms satellites circling every 90 minutes.

Along with other space services companies, Rocket Lab is in demand to continue adding to that space traffic including in sensitive defence areas. In 2025 it has a $US32 million deal with the US Space Force that involves developing a spacecraft and command and control centre so the US military can test its ability to rapidly position satellites to investigate suspicious objects and respond to threats. 

Space race escalates

Delivering its Neutron rocket next year will represent an ambitious step change for Rocket Lab as it vies for pole position in the escalating international space race, lining up alongside billionaire competitors including the SpaceX Falcon 9.

The US Government is seeking back up and redundancy options to deploy entire satellite constellations or cargo for the International Space Station or interplanetary missions to Mars or Venus. 

Beck says competition is essential to drive accessible pricing, new capabilities and redundancy. The first full assembly of Neutron’s new 3D printed Archimedes engine is currently undergoing extensive testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Centre in Mississippi.

Archimedes, ideally reusable for up to 20 launches, is geared for frequent flights with less stress than other rocket engines and upgradeable as needed. 

“We took the time to bring a mature design to the stand that has been thoroughly tested at component level, and to stand up an experienced team, manufacturing line, and test facilities to support long term production of Archimedes,” says Beck.

“Neutron will be a game changer … a reliable and cost-effective rocket with the capacity to lift up to 13,000kg to space,” says Beck.

Kiwi space economy

Ongoing investment in exploring and exploiting the final frontier is likely to bring big wins for the New Zealand economy and potentially the environment as the demand grows and clearer data on climate change informs decision making.

As the global space economy hits the trillions, Beck believes the skills, expertise and capabilities of New Zealand manufacturers, suppliers and machine shops associated with Rocket Lab will be in hot demand. 

The company has “a fantastic reputation internationally” and being able to sell that expertise to trusted partners and allies will “open up places in international science partnerships for our scientists and academics” who can lead research and development. 

He believes the time is right for the kind of out of the box thinking that New Zealanders are known for to improve life on Earth from space. “The next best thing to come from space hasn’t even been thought up yet.” 

For Sir Peter Beck, his investors and those motivated by his payload of satellites and entrepreneurial enthusiasm, the sky is the limit and he plans to be there in every possible way.