Brena Smith travelled by motorbike, from Napier, especially to watch the launch.
"I came to see the rocket, it's pretty special having a rocket go up from New Zealand and especially here."
Corey Isherwood from Mahia said the weather would help attract more people to the site.
"I live in Mahia so I thought I would pop over, given the weather."
Meanwhile, Sharelle Creswell from the Mahia Holiday Park, is working to finish an upgrade of the park in time for the end of the week.
"We've already had been asking if you can see the rocket from here."
The viewing area was set up by Wairoa District Council, which hopes rocket tourism would attract people to the area.
Council observers at the viewing site said about 40 people were in attendance for the expected launch time of 2.30pm but about 70 people had come in to enquire about what was happening.
Another 65 people had attended over the weekend.
The scrub was called shortly after the window opened at 2.30 pm.
''A combination of poor weather closing in and conjunction with the International Space Station left a narrow six-minute window for a launch attempt,'' a Rocket Lab spokeswoman said.
A new attempt will be made no earlier than 2.30pm today. The launch will be livestreamed and can be viewed on nzherald.co.nz.
Conditions on the Mahia Peninsula had been good earlier for the launch which the company says could have taken place any time between 2.30pm and 6.30pm.
The company had warned the launch could, however, could be scrubbed within seconds of the scheduled liftoff for technical reasons or because of a shift in weather conditions.
Road and marine closures in the vicinity were put in place this morning.
A communications glitch meant the first flight had to be terminated before reaching orbit but Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Peter Beck has said while thrilled with the first launch, the company has learned from thousands of pieces of data.
On Friday, Beck said ''the vehicle is very solid and the team's feeling very good. But it is a test flight and we've got more to learn''.
The 17m-tall Electron orbital launch vehicle will carry two Earth-imaging Dove satellites for Planet and two Lemur-2 satellites from Spire for weather mapping and ship traffic tracking.
If needed the company will launch a third test flight but it is keen to accelerate its transition into full commercial operations.
Rocket Lab says it has an advantage over larger competitors — some spun from space programmes developed by superpowers — because its smaller rockets can be launched more frequently from an area with very little air traffic.
The only large passenger aircraft that flies regularly in the vicinity is a LATAM Dreamliner that links Auckland and Santiago.
