Huntington Beach-based Rocket Lab is carrying more than small satellites on its first commercial launch, which has been rescheduled for late this year.
The “It’s Business Time” mission is loading the hopes of Orange County’s developing satellite hub with it, literally and figuratively.
Locals aboard the November launch include a GeoOptics Inc. satellite built by Irvine-based Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems Inc., and IRVINE01, an educational payload by the Irvine CubeSat STEM Program, which is made up of a consortium of high schools in Irvine (see story, page 32).
Its ELaNa XIX mission for NASA will launch in December from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, the world’s only private orbital launch site. It will transport research and development payloads from NASA and educational institutions to conduct a wide variety of new in-orbit science, including measuring radiation in the Van Allen belts, understanding their impact on spacecraft, and monitoring space weather.
Tyvak parent Terran Orbital Corp. recently raised $36 million in a Series B round that included prior investor Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT), and new backers Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) and Beach Point Capital.
Proceeds will be used to purchase expensive manufacturing equipment for the company’s new 40,000- square-foot design and production facility, and to bring on more highly trained, software and mechanical engineers.
The facility is billed as the world’s largest manufacturing site of nanosatellites.
“We turn out satellites in six to 12 months,” Terran Chief Executive Anthony Previte told the Business Journal. “As a company, I think we’ve run more than 60 programs at this point.”
Nanosatellites are generally considered to weigh 1 kilogram to 25 kilograms.
Rocket Lab and Tyvac are trying to revolutionize access to space with small satellites through frequent launches. The space race involves about 40 U.S. companies and several global competitors.
Tyvac’s local employment has ballooned to more than 100 at its Irvine Spectrum headquarters, and about a dozen more in other offices in Colorado, a machine shop in Santa Maria, an international outfit in Torino, Italy, and a recent expansion in the United Kingdom.
“We want to be a one-stop solutions provider,” Previte said. “We cover the entire suite.”
Terran designs, manufactures, launches and operates satellites, and mines and sells data gathered from orbital payloads.
The strong diversification has pushed annual revenue past $25 million, nearly evenly split between commercial and government work.
Unicorn in Space
Rocket Lab plans to develop its own dedicated U.S. launch site at either Cape Canaveral in Florida, Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska or Vandenberg Air Force Base north of Lompoc. It’s assessing them on a range of criteria, including anticipated pad-construction cost and time frame; regulatory lead times; and operational costs.
Launch Complex 2 will be designed for monthly orbital launches. Its first mission is slated for the second quarter of next year.
A $75 million Series D round last year led by San Francisco-based Data Collective put it in unicorn status, a private company with market value in excess of $1 billion. The company has raised $148 million; other backers include Khosla Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, K1W1 Ltd., Promos Ventures and Lockheed Martin.
It has no immediate plans to raise more capital.
Chief Executive Peter Beck, who’s considered a founding father of New Zealand’s developing space program, expanded operations to Huntington Beach only two years ago. The company houses engine production on a 3-acre site at 14520 Delta Lane in the shadows of other aviation and aerospace companies, including EnCore, Zodiac and Airtech Advanced Materials.
“The driving force was the access to an incredible talent pool of people,” Beck told the Business Journal in April.
Rocket Lab, established in 2006, 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 top executives and handles all engine manufacturing, avionics and other electronics.
Monetizing
Rocket Lab’s runway to generating revenue is open: the going rate for a trip to space is in the neighborhood of $6 million to $8 million.
The company wants to launch every 72 hours at scale.
Rocket Lab is a discount rocketeer compared to the $65 million to $90 million launch costs of the likes of SpaceX, for instance. Elon Musk’s unicorn recently valued at about $10 billion.
NovaWurks Inc. is another local player, taking nanosatellites to another level.
The Los Alamitos-based company, founded in 2011 by University of California-Irvine graduate and aerospace veteran Talbot Jaeger, has been developing even smaller spacecraft and space structures.
Its Hyper-Integrated Satlet is a 20-by-20-by-10-centimeter, mass produced, Lego-like building block with the functional capabilities of an autonomous satellite and the added capacity to conform to any shape of any payload for a variety of mission purposes.
In October, the “satlet”—the industry term for mini-satellites—became the first propulsion-capable satellite assembled by NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Paolo Nespoli aboard the International Space Station and deployed into low-Earth Orbit, roughly 99 to 1,200 miles above the Earth’s surface.
NovaWurks will be part of the largest U.S. orbital rideshare in November, joining more than 70 spacecraft from about 35 organizations. Its eXperiment for Cellular Integration Technology spacecraft will be aboard Spaceflight SSO-A: SmallSat Express, which is scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base via the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket made by Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. in Hawthorne.
The eXCITe spacecraft is the next test in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s “Phoenix” initiative, an effort to develop new satellite designs to validate satlet system clusters in low-Earth orbit.
“Our long-term objective is to establish the HISat as the go-to platform for a wide variety of satellite and space structure platforms,” NovaWurks Chief Operating Officer James Greer said.
The self-funded company has received more than $50 million in contracts since 2012. It employs 24 in Los Alamitos.
