The “Virginia is for Launch Lovers” mission was the first of three launches involving 15 satellites for HawkEye 360, a maker of radio-frequency “geo-analytics” tracking services for military, maritime and border security clients.
The name of the mission is a play on a local tourism slogan, “Virginia is for Lovers” and perhaps a nod to the state’s US$45m ($70m) in grants toward Rocket Lab’s assembly and launch centre for its much larger Neutron rocket, due in 2024 and which will launch exclusively from the US.
In the run-up to today’s launch, founder and CEO Peter Beck has been posting pictures of the first Neutron components being manufactured and the first stage of Neutron’s assembling centre in Virginia.
Rocket Lab now has a majority of its 1500 staff in the US, but Beck says Launch Complex 1 at Mahia will maintain a high volume of Electron launches.
In an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Heather Du Plessis-Allan yesterday evening, he underlined his stance that global expansion was a sign of success, and that others should follow in his footsteps of expanding their business overseas.
His message to entrepreneurs: Get out of New Zealand - at least for a while.
It was important for entrepreneurs to escape NZ’s “tall poppy syndrome” and to test if their ideas were world-class by testing them on the global stage.
“What you need to understand before you pour your life into a business is that what you actually end up with in the end is something that people want. And also something that hasn’t been tried before and proven to be unsuccessful.”
Rocket Lab shares were up 3.3 per cent to US$4.98, well off its year-high of US$12.47, for a market cap of US$2.36b.
The stock, which listed at US$10.00 in November 2020, has staged a modest recovery recently but is still well off its all-time high of US$18.69.
Read more about Rocket Lab’s US expansion and push to fill 145 vacant roles, here.
