Markets with Madison: Inside Rocket Lab’s NASA site
Welcome to Wallops Island, Virginia. This episode takes you behind the construction of Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-3 where it's preparing for Neutron rocket to take flight.
Video Player is loading.
Current Time 0:00
/
Duration 0:00
Loaded: 0%
0:00
Stream Type LIVE
Remaining Time -0:00
1x
Chapters
descriptions off, selected
captions settings, opens captions settings dialog
captions off, selected
This is a modal window.
Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.
End of dialog window.
This is a modal window. This modal can be closed by pressing the Escape key or activating the close button.
South Island regions dominate ASB economic rankings
UP NEXT:
Autoplay in
3
Disable Autoplay
Cancel Video
Welcome to Wallops Island, Virginia. This episode takes you behind the construction of Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-3 where it's preparing for Neutron rocket to take flight.
NOW PLAYING • Markets with Madison: Inside Rocket Lab’s NASA site
Welcome to Wallops Island, Virginia. This episode takes you behind the construction of Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-3 where it's preparing for Neutron rocket to take flight.
Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander touched down on the moon on Monday morning with the help of software and solar panels made by Rocket Lab.
Blue Ghost was the second private spacecraft to reach the lunar surface, but the first to execute a flawless landing.
Last year, Intuitive Machines – likeFirefly, a private operator based in Texas – and Japan’s space agency both landed craft on the lunar surface. But both toppled over, limiting the experiments they could carry out.
China has also completed a successful moon landing, while craft from India, Russia, an Israeli non-profit and a Japanese company all crashed.
That feeling you get when you look out the window and realize you’re almost home! T-4 days until we land in the Moon. Blue Ghost will reach her final destination no earlier than 2:34 am CST on March 2. We’ll start the joint livestream with @NASA at 1:20 am CST, approximately 75… pic.twitter.com/t5TN85zpmM
Blue Ghost was launched on a SpaceX Falcon9, but used Rocket Lab’s Max Flight and Max Ground Data Software flight software “through all mission phases, including descent and landing”, the company said.
Rocket Lab’s spacecraft operations team worked alongside Firefly’s Blue Ghost operations team in both Colorado and Texas in the United States.
The work involved performing orbit determination, planning manoeuvre, generating commands and monitoring the lander’s on-board guidance, navigation, and control system health throughout the orbital and landing phases of the mission, the Kiwi-American firm said.
Firefly's Blue Ghost lander's shadow on the Moon's surface during its lunar landing on Monday NZT. Firefly and fellow Texan company Intuitive Machines are part of Nasa’s efforts to harness private enterprise to reduce the cost of taking scientific and technological payloads to the moon. For this mission, Nasa is paying Firefly US$101.5 million. Photo / Firefly Aerospace via AFP
Rocket Lab also supplied three high-efficiency solar power assemblies, mounted on the lander’s sides and top deck, providing 400W of power over the mission’s 1470 operational hours (or 61 days, including 14 Earth days on the moon).
Sir Peter Beck’s firm entered the spacecraft solar panel business by buying New Mexico-based SolAero for US$80 million ($142.4m) in 2022. In the purchase, it inherited marquee SolAero projects, including the solar panels used to power the James Webb Space Telescope.
An image shot from Blue Ghost's top deck while in lunar orbit, showing the Moon's south pole on the far left. The Firefly craft was powered by solar panels made by Rocket Lab. Photo / Firefly Aerospace via AFP.
Last November, Rocket Lab finalised US$23.9m in Biden Administration “Chips Act” funding to double its production of radiation-hardened solar cells, labelled in a market filing as “important components for national defence and security satellites”.
It also hired an extra 100 staff in high-paying roles. US President Donald Trump has attacked the legislation, saying the same outcome can be achieved with tariffs. New Mexico’s state Government chipped in a further US$25.5m in grants and tax incentives.
The Blue Ghost moon lander at Firefly Aerospace headquarters in Cedar Park, Texas, on December 3, 2024. Photo / Getty Images
One of Beck’s goals has been to diversify Rocket Lab’s revenue beyond rocket launches.
A note issued by Clare Capital overnight illustrated the progress made on that front in just the past year:
Source / Clare Capital, Rocket Lab filings. CTS is cost to serve. SG&A is selling, general and administrative incentives.
The business seems poised for further growth.
A new Rocket Lab assembly line in Auckland is cranking out dog bowl-sized flywheels, four of which (at US$120,000 a pop) work in tandem to orientate a satellite. It can produce several hundred per year.
Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which will compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink, is a rumoured customer, but Rocket Lab won’t comment beyond noting the general boom in low-Earth orbit craft.
Rocket Lab is also one of the firms chosen to pitch ideas for the US space agency’s multi-billion mission to retrieve Mars rocks and bring them to Earth - as soon as 2027, if it gets the green light.
Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Sir Peter Beck in the Neutron's fairing.
Rocket Lab (which has US$484m in cash) also booked another net loss (US$189m). The firm has always said it won’t get into the black until the launch of its much larger, crew-capable Neutron rocket - scheduled for a test launch later this year.
Source / Clare Capital
Clare’s charts illustrate that Neutron will make Rocket Lab competitive with SpaceX in the medium-launch market.
All going to plan, a Neutron launch will cost US$53m to US$70m for Space X’s Falcon 9 and carry a payload of up to 13 tonnes to low-Earth orbit (or about 30 times the Electron) to the Falcon 9’s 18 tonnes. That means the two firms will go toe-to-toe in terms of per-tonne pricing at around US$4m per launch.
Falcon also has a “Heavy” variant that can carry a 64-tonne manifest. But of 458 Falcon launches, only 11 - and only two last year - have been in that configuration.
SpaceX is also testing Starship, which is expected to be able to carry a payload of between 100 and 150 tonnes into low-Earth orbit.
Clare also illustrated that although Rocket Lab is the clear number two to SpaceX - no one else is close - the Kiwi-American firm’s record number of launches last year paled next to the velocity achieved by Musk’s outfit.
That was 138 launches - many in-house for Starlink as it added its new Direct to Cell capability, as now adopted by partners including T-Mobile in the US and One NZ here.
Bezos’ Blue Origin might be able to tap tens in billions of its founder’s fortune, but it only launched its first New Glenn rocket in January, following years of delays. The upper stage made it to orbit but a self-landing booster failed. The firm’s chief executive, David Limp, told the Wall Street Journal he’s aiming for six to eight New Glenn launches per year. The medium-size New Glenn can has a 45-tonne payload capacity. (Blue Origin also has a smaller rocket that has taken Bezos, William Shatner and others to the edge of space.)
Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.
