Rocket Lab’s next-generation Neutron rocket is being bankrolled, in part, by a US$24.3 million ($38.3m) grant from the United States Space Force. And the US Air Force, various US spy agencies and the Australian Department of Defence have been repeat customers.
At its third-quarter result, Rocket Lab outlined a growing defence business, including:
- A deal to supply radiation-hardened solar cells to power three satellites for a global missile warning system that will be bought by Lockheed Martin for the US Space Force, through its New Mexico-based SolAero subsidiary (bought for US$80m last December).
- A US$14m contract to supply satellite separation systems to Lockheed Martin, a prime contractor for the US Space Development Agency Tranche 1 Transport Layer (T1TL) satellites. That is a Department of Defense project that will, in Rocket Lab’s words, “provide assured, resilient, low-latency military data and connectivity worldwide to the full range of warfighter platforms”. T1TL comprises a mesh network of 126 optically-interconnected space vehicles and will form the initial warfighting capability tranche of the NDSA.
- Providing guidance software and navigation analysis and mission control support for the Mandrake-2 mission, a Darpa and Space Development Agency project that uses laser links for satellite-to-satellite and satellite-to-ground station communications. A successful 40-minute test between two satellites was carried out mid-year. A global mesh network is on the cards.
- An agreement with the US Department of Defense’s Transportation Command - a military logistics agency - to explore how Rocket Lab’s Electron and Neutron rockets could rapidly transport equipment between two points on the planet, and how Photon (Electron’s upper stage, which doubles as a spacecraft) could be used for in-orbit cargo depots and as delivery re-entry vehicles.
Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck has long defended his company’s defence business on the basis many military technologies are dual-use.
“GPS is the best example. It’s run, owned and operated and maintained by the US Air Force, but we all use it to get to the supermarket,” he previously told the Herald.
Beck has also maintained his company only supported defence research, not operational launches. Again, that’s something we’ve arguably all benefitted from, whatever our stance on it. The internet emerged from an early 1970s Darpa project.
All local Rocket Lab launches have been signed off by the minister in charge of the NZ Space Agency (Stuart Nash, by dint of being minister in charge of MBIE, within which our Space Agency sits; see the Herald’s Official Information Act request for documentation around the Gunsmoke-J mission for an example of the mission-approval process).
The contracts outlined above follow New Zealand signing a space defence accord with the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France and Australia in February.
Signatories described themselves as partners in national security space operations, prepared to protect and defend against hostile space activities in accordance with relevant international law.
Rocket Lab is scheduled to stage its first Electron launch from US soil on Friday, from its recently completed Launch Complex 2 in Virginia, and the Neutron (scheduled for its first mission in 2024) will launch exclusively from the US.
Beck said US Government clients wanted US launches, but Electron will still stage most of its launches from New Zealand.
