Huntington Beach-based Rocket Lab will open a 14-day window this week on its first commercial orbital launch.
The It’s Business Time mission will carry payloads, or small satellites, made by Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems for data gatherers Spire Global and GeoOptics Inc.
The two-week launch period begins April 20, with daily windows between 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. at Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, the only private orbital launch site in the world.
Rocket Lab’s mission is simple, yet incredibly bold: revolutionize access to space with small satellites through frequent launches.
The initiative underscores one of the prevailing trends in space travel: the development and deployment of ever- smaller satellites.
This space race includes about 40 U.S. companies and several global competitors.
“We’re the only one to date to actually build one and deliver a customer’s spacecraft into orbit,” founder and Chief Executive Peter Beck told the Business Journal. “There’s a clear need in the market for small rockets to lift small satellites.”
The other prevailing trend is carrying people and big payloads to space, missions under way from the likes of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. in Hawthorne and Virgin Galactic in Mohave.
About a year ago Rocket Lab’s Electron vehicle became the first to reach space from a private launch site.
In late January a test flight for four customers delivered a payload to orbit that included one weather satellite and two imaging satellites.
Its smallest spacecraft delivered was about 200 grams, or roughly 7 ounces, its largest about 220 kilograms, or 485 pounds. Customers who’ve signed up to fly on Electron include NASA, Spaceflight, Planet, Moon Express, and commercial flight partners Spire and GeoOptics Inc.
San Francisco-based Spire specializes in gathering data from small satellites positioned above remote corners of the globe. GeoOptics in Pasadena is developing remote sensing technology on CICERO, a constellation of 24 microsatellites performing radio occultation, measuring global weather patterns used in everything from agriculture to defense intelligence.
“Think about us as a glorified freight company,” Beck said.
And one of the highest valued private companies in Southern California.
A $75 million series D round last year led by San Francisco-based Data Collective put it in unicorn status with a valuation surpassing $1 billion. The company has raised $148 million, with other backers including Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, K1W1 Ltd., Promos Ventures and Lockheed Martin.
It doesn’t have immediate plans to raise more capital.
Beck, who’s considered a founding father of New Zealand’s developing space program, expanded operations only two years ago to Huntington Beach, where the company houses engine production on a three-acre site at 14520 Delta Lane in the shadows of other aviation and aerospace companies, including EnCore, Zodiac and Airtech Advanced Materials.
The location is close enough to Los Angeles International Airport, which has direct flights to New Zealand, but the region’s pull was the deciding factor.
“The driving force was the access to an incredible talent pool of people,” said Beck, who launched the company in 2006.
Rocket Lab employs about 220, the majority in New Zealand, where early research and development laid the foundation for the Electron program, which launched in 2013.
Rocket bodies are manufactured close to the launch site, where customer payloads are delivered.
The Huntington Beach operation houses executives and handles all engine manufacturing, avionics and other electronics.
This year the site will produce more than 100 3-D printed, electric turbo-powered Rutherford engines, fueling an ongoing hiring push of engineers, software designers and programmers, machinists and other specialists.
“There’s huge growth,” Beck said.
Ten engines are used per flight, so Rocket Lab is on pace for 10 flights this year, a rather high number.
“This year it’s one per month. Next year the aim is every two weeks,” he said.
SpaceX, by comparison, recorded 18 successful launches last year. The company, established in 2002 by Tesla Inc. and PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, has raised nearly $1.7 billion and was recently valued at $27 billion, according to Equidate Inc.
Rocket Lab’s runway to generating revenue is clear: Its going rate on a space trip is in the neighborhood of $6 million to $8 million. “That produces revenue numbers pretty quickly,” Beck said, adding that the company aims to launch every 72 hours at scale.
Rocket Lab is a discount rocketeer compared to say the $65 million to $90 million launch costs of the likes of SpaceX, according to Beck.
New Frontier
Space companies and programs face some of the most stringent barriers to entry, a reason private industry has lagged far behind the public sector.
Rocket Lab’s private launch site required a treaty between the U.S. and New Zealand, which had to create an entirely new regulatory framework to approve mission launches. The company had to install tracking systems on remote islands throughout the Pacific and Europe.
Granting air space and clearing the skies of other aircraft during launch missions is another enormous complication, a reason there are only a handful of launch sites throughout the world, and only a few in the U.S.
New Zealand’s isolated position on the globe alleviated some of those matters, with flights to Chile the only ones from the island nation in the launch path.
“There’s a good reason why governments usually do these programs,” Beck said.
If Rocket Lab is successful, the company could create an entirely new marketplace while enabling new fleets of planetary infrastructure capable of changing the lives of millions on the ground below.
The company is involved in this program, with dozens of public and private partners, and plans to launch hundreds, potentially thousands, of satellites into space to provide internet connections on the farthest reaches and most isolated stretches of Earth.
Another push is weather satellites—the U.S. has only about 30, and they’re all aging. Boosting that number exponentially would provide unprecedented insights on climate change and prediction of natural disasters.
“That’s quite transformational,” Beck said. “All of these things come back to rapid, frequent and low-cost launch.”
