Blue Ghost was launched on a SpaceX Falcon9, but used Rocket Lab’s Max Flight and Max Ground Data Software flight software “through all mission phases, including descent and landing”, the company said.

Rocket Lab’s spacecraft operations team worked alongside Firefly’s Blue Ghost operations team in both Colorado and Texas in the United States.

The work involved performing orbit determination, planning manoeuvre, generating commands and monitoring the lander’s on-board guidance, navigation, and control system health throughout the orbital and landing phases of the mission, the Kiwi-American firm said.

Rocket Lab also supplied three high-efficiency solar power assemblies, mounted on the lander’s sides and top deck, providing 400W of power over the mission’s 1470 operational hours (or 61 days, including 14 Earth days on the moon).

Sir Peter Beck’s firm entered the spacecraft solar panel business by buying New Mexico-based SolAero for US$80 million ($142.4m) in 2022. In the purchase, it inherited marquee SolAero projects, including the solar panels used to power the James Webb Space Telescope.

Last November, Rocket Lab finalised US$23.9m in Biden Administration “Chips Act” funding to double its production of radiation-hardened solar cells, labelled in a market filing as “important components for national defence and security satellites”.

It also hired an extra 100 staff in high-paying roles. US President Donald Trump has attacked the legislation, saying the same outcome can be achieved with tariffs. New Mexico’s state Government chipped in a further US$25.5m in grants and tax incentives.

Last week Rocket Lab revealed its largest increase in quarterly revenue since its 2021 Nasdaq debut – a 382% jump to US$132m.

One of Beck’s goals has been to diversify Rocket Lab’s revenue beyond rocket launches.

A note issued by Clare Capital overnight illustrated the progress made on that front in just the past year:

The business seems poised for further growth.

A new Rocket Lab assembly line in Auckland is cranking out dog bowl-sized flywheels, four of which (at US$120,000 a pop) work in tandem to orientate a satellite. It can produce several hundred per year.

Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which will compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink, is a rumoured customer, but Rocket Lab won’t comment beyond noting the general boom in low-Earth orbit craft.

And two Rocket Lab-designed spacecraft have been delivered to Nasa for a Mars mission scheduled for later this year. The two craft will be ferried to the Red Planet on a New Glenn rocket made by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, then be deployed into orbit to study its atmosphere.

Rocket Lab is also one of the firms chosen to pitch ideas for the US space agency’s multi-billion mission to retrieve Mars rocks and bring them to Earth – as soon as 2027, if it gets the green light.

Rocket Lab (which has US$484m in cash) also booked another net loss (US$189m). The firm has always said it won’t get into the black until the launch of its much larger, crew-capable Neutron rocket – scheduled for a test launch later this year.

Clare’s charts illustrate that Neutron will make Rocket Lab competitive with SpaceX in the medium-launch market.

All going to plan, a Neutron launch will cost US$53m to US$70m for Space X’s Falcon 9 and carry a payload of up to 13 tonnes to low-Earth orbit (or about 30 times the Electron) to the Falcon 9’s 18 tonnes. That means the two firms will go toe-to-toe in terms of per-tonne pricing at around US$4m per launch.

Falcon also has a “Heavy” variant that can carry a 64-tonne manifest. But of 458 Falcon launches, only 11 – and only two last year – have been in that configuration.

SpaceX is also testing Starship, which is expected to be able to carry a payload of between 100 and 150 tonnes into low-Earth orbit.

Clare also illustrated that although Rocket Lab is the clear number two to SpaceX – no one else is close – the Kiwi-American firm’s record number of launches last year paled next to the velocity achieved by Musk’s outfit.

That was 138 launches – many in-house for Starlink as it added its new Direct to Cell capability, as now adopted by partners including T-Mobile in the US and One NZ here.

Bezos’ Blue Origin might be able to tap tens in billions of its founder’s fortune, but it only launched its first New Glenn rocket in January, following years of delays. The upper stage made it to orbit but a self-landing booster failed. The firm’s chief executive, David Limp, told the Wall Street Journal he’s aiming for six to eight New Glenn launches per year. The medium-size New Glenn can has a 45-tonne payload capacity. (Blue Origin also has a smaller rocket that has taken Bezos, William Shatner and others to the edge of space.)

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.