Editorial: Rocket Lab... hero or villain for launching Humanity Star?

The Humanity Star is designed to remind us of Earth's fragility.

It still seems unreal that a small New Zealand company launched a rocket that put satellites into Earth orbit.

The success of Rocket Lab on only its second test flight from remote Mahia Peninsula deserves all the applause it has received so far.

Rocket Lab, founded by New Zealander Peter Beck, aims to put small commercial satellites into orbit for a fraction of the cost of established operations.

The company is now nominally domiciled in the US for regulatory reasons but Beck remains chief executive, many of its shareholders are Kiwis, and its operations are located here, as are many of its suppliers.

On Sunday the rocket, called Still Testing, deployed its payloads, a satellite for an Earth imaging customer and others for weather mapping and tracking ship traffic.

Revealed later — it also contained the Humanity Star — a metre-wide disco ball — said to become the brightest object in the night sky and which circles the planet once every 90 minutes.

"The Humanity Star is a reminder to all on Earth about our fragile position in the universe," Beck said.

"The project aims to draw people's eyes up and encourage them to look past day-to-day issues and consider a bigger picture, including the role space will play in the future of our species.

"We must come together as a species to solve the really big issues like climate change and resource shortages."

Noble and commendable. But Beck has his detractors.

One does wonder whether we should be putting ostensibly junk satellites into orbit. It's getting crowded up there, so much so, that some predict we may have difficultly launching rockets into space as a result.

And with few genuine dark sky spots left in the world those who complain of the potential light pollution may have a small point.

Nonetheless the Kiwi company sure got one over SpaceX's Elon Musk, which plans to launch a red Tesla car in similar fashion, possibly this month.

As space marketing goes, Rocket lab wins the gold medal.