Rocket Lab opens second launch pad at Mahia, lands US$143m contract

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Rocket Lab has officially opened its second launchpad - "Pad B" - at its Launch Complex 1 at Mahia on the East Coast of the North Island.

Along with its recently completed launchpad in Virginia, the upgrade will give the Kiwi-American space firm the ability to stage up to 132 launches per year.

Rocket Lab also announced its largest-ever contract today: a US$143m ($210m) deal to build 17 half-tonne "spacecraft" buses for low-Earth orbiting satellites that will be launched for NYSE-listed Global Star, which offers mobile communications services.

The deal - a subcontract for Toronto-listed MDA - is a key win for Rocket Lab as it seeks to diversify its revenue by adding more spaces services on top of its launch schedule - a strategy that's been bolstered by a series of recent acquisitions.

All 17 of the 500kg spacecraft will be designed and manufactured at Rocket Lab's Long Beach production complex and headquarters, where a new high-volume spacecraft manufacturing line is being developed to support growing customer demand for Rocket Lab satellites, the company said in a statement.

The satellites, due to launch in 2025, will also use components from several recent acquisitions: New Mexico's SolAero (bought by Rocket Lab for US$80m in December), Denver's ASI (bought for US$40m last year) and Toronto's Sinclair Interplanetary (bought in 2020 for an undisclosed sum).

Rocket Lab's shares, which have suffered along with other tech stocks and the market in general during the correction, were up 12.04 per cent to US$9.67 on the news, even as the broader indexes were under pressure with the Ukraine news.

Mahia expansion

Founder Peter Beck says the launchpad will give his company the capability for back-to-back launches.

Along with its new Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Island in the US state of Virginia - which is nearing its first launch - the opening of Pad B gives Rocket Lab the capability to stage 132 flights per year.

Beck won't be drawn on any specific numbers in the near-term, but says we'll see an increased frequency of missions over the next 12 months.

Pad B's first launch is scheduled to take place next week for Japanese Earth-imaging company Synspective. The launch window opens on Tuesday.

It's big moment will come later this year, when Rocket Lab launches Nasa's Capstone satellite which will be ferried into lunar orbit by a Rocket Lab Photon spacecraft. The Capstone mission - which forms part of the ground work for Nasa's push to return astronauts to the Moon under its Artemis programme - will be the first lunar launch from NZ soil.

The new launchpad will be for Rocket Lab's Electron rocket only. Beck says the much larger Neutron, due for first lift-off in 2024, will launch exclusively from Virginia - in part because of demands from customers like Nasa and the US Department of Defence, but also for reasons of industrial scale.

"To give you a sense of the scale, if we took all the liquid oxygen that's produced in New Zealand, we'd only fill half the tank, let alone all the other kinds of logistics that are associated with these very, very, large launch vehicles."