Dawn Aerospace, a New Zealand-Dutch space transportation company, has conducted five flights of the company’s Mk-II Aurora suborbital spaceplane. Video / Supplied
Dawn Aerospace has won a major contract with a putative rival to Elon Musk’s Starlink, and revealed aggressive hiring plans.
The Kiwi-Dutch firm, which has its main assembly plant, test operation and most staff in Christchurch, says it has been selected to provide satellite production systems for Lynk - aUS firm, that has two satellites in low Earth orbit now and plans a swarm of 5000 within five years, financed by US$2 billion in orders from mobile network operators.
With Dawn Aerospace's Mk-II Aurora spaceplane, from left: CEO and CTO Stefan Powell, operations lead Tim Dutton, finance manager Vivien Knight, test pilot Iagho Amaral and sales and marketing manager Catherine Moreau Hammond. Photo / Chris Keall
Last month, 2degrees revealed its in trials with Lynk. There’s no timeline yet for a local launch, but Lynk has promised its first service across the Tasman “within months” and that it will “support all modern handsets”; that is, regular phones rather than brick-like satellite phones. It will pre-empt a similar service from Starlink, which numbers One (formerly Vodafone NZ) among its first customers.
Dawn Aerospace won’t reveal the dollar value of its Lynk deal, but it has helped underpin a hiring push.
The firm currently has 134 staff, with 71 in Christchurch - including chief executive Stephan Powell - and the balance in offices in the US and the Netherlands. That total includes 30 hired since January. Powell anticipates taking on a total of 60 new staff this year.
Dawn Aerospace's propulsion systems, designed for 30kg to 500kg satellites, include thrusters, tanks and control systems. The tech features on 12 operational satellites. Photo / Supplied
The young company, whose major backers include local VC funds Icehouse Ventures and Movac, supported by investors including GD1 and Derek Handley’s Aera deep tech and sustainability fund, announced a $20m raise at a $170m valuation last December. It said it had closed $22m worth of deals over 2022, with $150m more under negotiation.
The money is being used to develop Dawn’s two lines of business.
One is its satellite propulsion systems, which already feature in 12 operational satellites launched into space for various clients by SpaceX Falcon 9, European Space Agency Vega and Soyuz rockets. The propulsion systems have evolved into an all-in-one solution that includes thrusters, fuel tanks and control systems.
The other is Dawn’s own launch vehicle, a spaceplane called the Aurora - which is still at an early, pre-commercial stage.
In April, the Mk-II Aurora recently staged its first rocket-powered test flights - three over three days - from the Glentanner Aerodrome, about 5km from Aoraki Mt Cook. The craft is designed to take off and land on a runway. The test flights were relatively low, but Dawn aims to push the Mk-II over 100km - the Haman line that many regard as the start of space - and ultimately launch small satellites into low Earth orbit with its larger Mk-III which, for now, is still on the drawing board.
Dawn Aerospace ran test flights in the South Island high country. Photo / Supplied
Powell said room to expand, access to the Glentanner strip for testing, and the Government and local agency-fostered Christchurch aerospace cluster were the key reasons that his firm relocated south from its original base in Auckland. Dawn Aerospace is near neighbours with Kea Aerospace, co-founded by Mark Rocket - Peter Beck’s onetime partner-in-crime at Rocket Lab (more on Kea soon).
Beyond its unique way of (potentially) getting satellites into space, Powell says Dawn Aerospace is a trailblazer in its use of non-toxic fuels. Both the Aurora and Dawn’s satellite propulsion systems use nitrous oxide, which it pitches as a “green” solution next to traditional fuels like hydrogen peroxide.
The CEO says the Aurora is also a shift from the usual industry thinking with its fully re-usable design, which is engineered for a lifetime of use, not just a handful of flights. “It’s airplane thinking, not rocket thinking,” he says.
New field has multiple Kiwi connections
While satellite calling and messaging is old-hat, it has previously required a chunky satellite phone.
New generation satellites from Lynk, Starlink and GlobalStar support text messaging - and, soon, data and voice - from a satellite to almost any recent smartphone, no modifications required. The metaphor Musk uses is that a satellite acts as a “celltower in the sky” that lets you communicate even when you’re out of celltower range.
It’s a new field with several Kiwi connections. One (formerly Vodafone NZ) revealed last month that it will be one of the first partners for Starlink’s planned satellite-to-phone services (and the first local customer), with anywhere-in-NZ texting by late next year, with voice and data to follow.
Starlink has around 4000 today, with 2000 second-generation satellites - which support satellite-to-mobile services - due to launch later this year (the exact timing is reliant on parent company SpaceX successfully launching its new Starship rocket, which will ferry the second-generation satellites to orbit. Its maiden test flight did not go so well).
Apple has already launched an SOS Via Satellite service in the US and Canada, which debuted in November and has since expanded to Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and the UK, with other territories tipped to follow soon.
The service lets you send a text, plus the location of your phone, to emergency services even if you’re out of cell tower range. No special hardware is needed, just a stock-standard iPhone - but it must be the latest model the iPhone 14.
Apple partnered with communications satellite operator Globalstar for its new service, and juiced things along by investing US$450m in Globalstar to help it expand its network. Globalstar, in turn, has recently become Rocket Lab’s single largest client in terms of advance orders.
Talking to the Herald after his telco announced its Starlink tie-up, One CEO Jason Paris said he wasn’t worried about Musk’s Starlink, or any other satellite operator, ultimately eating his lunch.
Starlink would be good for 100 per cent coverage of NZ and its territorial waters for text messaging, Paris said. For voice calling and data, satellite-to-phone service would be good for remote areas. But it would be too slow and expensive to compete against celltower networks in areas that did have mobile coverage.
