Rocket Lab has created a US-based, wholly-owned subsidiary “to serve the defence and intelligence community”.
Rocket Lab National Security LLC “will deliver reliable launch services and space systems capabilities to the US Government and its
Rocket Lab has created a US-based, wholly-owned subsidiary “to serve the defence and intelligence community”.
Rocket Lab National Security LLC “will deliver reliable launch services and space systems capabilities to the US Government and its allies”, the Kiwi-American firm says.
Publicising its new defence unit marks a shift in optics by the Kiwi-American company, which has previously downplayed that aspect of its business, notwithstanding that military grants and contracts have always figured large.
In its early days, the Auckland-founded firm landed a research grant from the US Department of Defense’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).
Defence contractor Lockheed Martin was an early investor. Rocket Lab has launched multiple satellites for various US defence and intelligence agencies on its Electron rockets.
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:
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.
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