Photo: Kieran Fanning / Rocket Lab / AFP
The company has been picked to design the craft for Nasa s Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPDE) mission, to put craft into orbit around Mars to study its magnetosphere, to better understand how solar wind removes atmosphere over time.
Two of Rocketlab s small Photon spacecraft would be carried to near the planet aboard a large Nasa craft on an 11-month voyage and then be launched into orbit.
Rocket Lab founder and chief executive Peter Beck said the mission was a way of doing big science in a small package. Planetary science missions have traditionally costed hundreds of millions of dollars and taken up to a decade to come to fruition. Our Photon spacecraft for ESCAPADE will demonstrate a more cost-effective approach to planetary exploration that will increase the science community s access to our solar system for the better.
More than 150 aerospace specialists have arrived on short term visas to work in New Zealand for the satellite launch service provider Rocket Lab since the country's border closed.
Rocket Lab USA is nearing a deal to go public through a merger with a special-purpose acquisition company that would value the firm at $US4.1 billion ($NZ5.6bn), including debt, the Wall Street Journal reported.