The Acquisitions & Partners Helping Rocket Lab Become A Success
Over the past few years, Rocket Lab has managed to establish itself as a very capable and impressive company within the space industry. They have done this through the innovation, development, launching, and more of unique rockets including Electron and soon to be Neutron. In addition to this, the company has partnered with and acquired multiple different companies over time to help them succeed.
Specifically, Rocket Lab has acquired and partnered with multiple companies including Sinclair Interplanetary, Advanced Solutions Inc, Planetary System Corporation, and more. These companies help provide and create different necessary components such as space software, separation systems, and satellite components. All of which play a key role in the current and future success of Rocket Lab and its rockets.
While the majority of attention usually focuses on the rocket itself, there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes in the development, manufacturing, testing, and launching of a rocket. In addition, each launch vehicle such as Electron is made of many different parts that each serve a specific role. A role that is necessary for the success of the launch, payload delivery, and more.
Partners & Acquisitions
As of right now, there are three main companies that were acquired by Rocket Lab over time that I want to highlight. Acquisitions are transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred or consolidated with other entities. Each company focuses almost entirely on a specific software or component meant for launch vehicles such as Electron and more. These companies include Sinclair Interplanetary, Advanced Solutions Inc, and Planetary System Corporation. Over the last few years but primarily recently, each was acquired by Rocket Lab for a strategic reason. Here I will go more in-depth into what exactly each company provides and the benefit to Rocket Lab, Electron, and more.
Sinclair Interplanetary – The first company I want to highlight is Sinclair Interplanetary. This company works to create reliable, flight-proven satellite subsystems and components that make different missions possible. In 2020, leading satellite hardware manufacturer Sinclair Interplanetary became part of the Rocket Lab family. The acquisition enabled Sinclair Interplanetary to tap into Rocket Lab’s resources, scale, manufacturing capability, and innovative technologies to make world-leading satellite hardware accessible to more customers. With these resources, the company can offer a wide variety of high-performance, affordable, rapid-response spacecraft components for small satellite missions. They point out that whether your mission is a one-off technology demonstrator, an interplanetary expedition, or a constellation, they’ll help you make it happen. In addition, Rocket Lab satellite components can be incorporated into Photon spacecraft buses for a full mission solution, or purchased separately for incorporation into your own spacecraft design.
Sinclair Interplanetary offers two main satellite components. This includes star trackers and reaction wheels. Both of which are very important for the successful operation of satellites. Currently, there are over 90 of these star trackers in orbit. These high-performance star trackers and baffles are built for small spacecraft. These star trackers come with different baffle options including no baffle, short baffle, and large baffle. Each provides a different benefit and price tag coming in at 120,000 up to $140,000 in price. Next are the reaction wheels. These high-reliability, vacuum-lubricated reaction wheels are designed for picosatellites, nanosatellites, and microsats. More than 240 wheels are on-orbit, performing well. All Sinclair Interplanetary by Rocket Lab reaction wheels incorporate a built-in digital processor. They can be commanded over a serial bus to produce a desired speed, momentum, or torque. They report digital telemetry concerning speed, temperature, voltage, current, and other health parameters. Similar to the star trackers they have a long list of options and sizes to choose from.
Advanced Solutions Inc – The next important acquisition Rocket Lab made was of Advanced Solutions Inc. In October 2021, Rocket Lab acquired Advanced Solutions, Inc or ASI, a Colorado-based aerospace engineering firm delivering mission-proven space software, mission simulation, and testing solutions. ASI’s industry-leading advances in flight software, mission simulation, and Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) significantly strengthen Rocket Lab’s Space Systems portfolio, which encompasses the Photon spacecraft line and Sinclair Interplanetary satellite hardware. Both Rocket Lab and ASI have built leading space businesses with mission proven technology. Together, they are delivering an industry leading comprehensive space solution spanning launch, spacecraft build, and mission design and operations.
Some examples of the company’s simulations, software, and more include SOLIS, MAX Flight Software, and GN&C. SOLIS provides a complete spacecraft simulation environment in STK that embeds a desktop version of ASI’s full-featured MAX Flight Software. It can rapidly evaluate system trade-offs and ensure that spacecraft capabilities and constraints are considered early and satisfied at all times. MAX is flight-proven off-the-shelf spacecraft flight software that provides the foundation for your complex space mission from day one. MAX can be configured rapidly for different spacecraft using the SOLIS mission engineering environment. Lastly, you have Industry leading Guidance, Navigation and Control, or GN&C expertise spanning the full spacecraft lifecycle including requirements definition and conceptual design, hardware development and procurement, algorithm design and object-oriented flight software development, simulation, and test, system level integration, and mission operations. The staff includes a talented mix of engineers who have worked on missions ranging from experimental CubeSats to national asset class missions for NASA, DoD, and commercial enterprises.
Planetary System Corporation – The final acquisition I want to highlight is Planetary System Corporation. In October 2021, Rocket Lab acquired Planetary Systems Corporation or PSC, a Maryland-based aerospace hardware company delivering mechanical separation systems and satellite dispensers with a 100% mission success heritage across more than 50 missions. For more than 15 years, PSC’s Lightband separation systems used to separate satellites from rockets have enabled customers to lower their mission costs and streamline payload integration time from days to just minutes. PSC’s fully-encapsulated Canisterized Satellite Dispensers (CSD) are a reliable and cost-effective housing for small satellites that minimizes damage risk and eliminates the necessity for heavy or complicated interface structures between satellites and the launch vehicle. These Lightbands and CSDs complement Rocket Lab’s space hardware offering that includes the Maxwell satellite dispenser, the industry’s lightest CubeSat dispenser in its class. Incorporating Rocket Lab’s signature carbon-composite material and design, Maxwell is optimized for mass and simplicity and fully integrated with Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle, simplifying payload integration and deployment for small satellite mission. Together, Rocket Lab and PSC are building on their record of success and reliability to deliver an end-to-end solution for the space industry. Just like the companies mentioned prior, PSC has many different variants and types of lightbands, satellite dispensers, and more.
Conclusion
There is a lot that goes on prior to a successful rocket launch. The development, manufacturing, testing, and launching all require different work, components, and more. Rocket Lab over the last few years has worked to acquire and partner with different companies within the space industry. This process provides a win-win as the smaller companies get access to a lot of resources and Rocket Lab gets access to specific, tested, high-quality components. Some of these companies include Sinclair Interplanetary, Advanced Solutions Inc, and Planetary Systems Corporation. Each helps with space software, satellite components, separation systems, and more. We will have to wait to see if Rocket Lab continues to acquire more companies in the future, and its impact on the space industry.