US-based company finds affordable way to launch into space.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A private, U.S.-based company plans to build a base on New Zealand’s South Island from which to loft small satellites into low orbit.
According to Bloomberg, Rocket Lab’s goal with the venture is to increase the pace and affordability of sending up imaging and communication gear used for services including weather monitoring, natural disaster management, and crop surveillance.
“It’s an opportunity to create the world’s first commercial orbital launch range,” the company’s CEO, Peter Beck, told NBC News.
The site will be developed on Kaitorete Spit in the Canterbury region of New Zealand’s South Island — in a spot that NASA used for suborbital rocket launches in the 1960s.
The company’s chief executive, Peter Beck informed the New Zealand Herald that the area met all the firm’s requirements; a sparse population, a launch path over the ocean and proximity to a city where the 18m tall Electron rockets can be built.
Rocket Lab’s all-black Electron thruster can offer a launch for less than $5 million. The company, whose investors include Lockheed Martin, is targeting clients such as university programs and small start-ups, according to Bloomberg, and it already has 30 potential clients to help it take the lead i the privatized space race.
Rocket Labs faces an intimidating phalanx of competitors, including Boeing and investor Lockheed, but is optimistic it can shake up an industry whose currently jam-packed schedules entail years-long waits and fees upward of $200 million.
Rocket Lab hasn’t revealed who its customers will be, but Beck told NBC News that “we have a number of customers willing to fly with us” and that the first launch from Kaitorete Spit could come this year.