It’s been 18 months since Canada’s Sinclair Interplanetary was acquired by the quickly growing Rocket Lab, which is known for launching small satellites in New Zealand and soon, in the United States as well.
In March 2020, as reported by SpaceQ, the company made the decision for acquisition because it wanted to explore options during a phase of great company growth, out of the belief that they didn’t want to turn away customers and they wanted the infrastructure to be a larger company.
Sinclair Interplanetary’s name popped up again Sept. 1 in a release from Rocket Lab, which announced construction is starting on a new production facility (whose location was undisclosed in the release and in various media reports) that can manufacture up to 2,000 reaction wheels for satellites. The release also stated that Rocket Lab’s space systems business was “strengthened” by acquiring Sinclair Interplanetary.
“For the longest time, spacecraft and satellite components have been built individually by highly specialized engineers, with a high price tag and long wait times to match,” CEO Peter Beck said in the release.
“With the rise in constellations, the demand for high-quality components and spacecraft produced at scale continues to grow, and we’re addressing the bottleneck head on.”
Days later, Rocket Lab announced a Sept. 8 financial update for the first half of 2021, noting that its revenue of $29.5 million USD ($37.44 million CAD) is nearly 240% higher than that of 2020; the space systems segment alone contributed 18% of the total revenue, compared to 3% in the prior year. Gross margin and backlog have also improved for the quickly growing company.
SpaceQ reached out to Rocket Lab to find out more about how the company is doing, and the contributions of Sinclair Interplanetary to their bottom line. Since the timing of SpaceQ’s request fell around the busy time of the financial results release, Rocket Lab sent an e-mailed statement attributable to a spokesperson, noting what has been happening in the past few quarters.
The statement noted that Rocket Lab is most famous for its launch operations; the company is working on improvements to its Electron rocket line following a failure in latest launch (the company’s 20th) in May, but has otherwise signed several contracts this year along with merging with Vector Acquisition Corp. to trade publicly on the Nasdaq starting August 25.
Behind the scenes, Rocket Lab said in the statement, “we also design, manufacture, and operate spacecraft and satellite hardware for commercial and government customers.” For example, two Photon spacecraft are already in Earth orbit and NASA has selected others for missions to the moon and Mars.
The moon mission is called CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) and was covered in-depth by SpaceQ last month. Essentially, the mission will be a CubeSat that launches for a Moon mission that will test cislunar operations and the orbit required for NASA’s planned Gateway space station, in which the Canadian Space Agency is a partner through MDA’s Canadarm3.
The Mars mission was announced in August; called ESCAPADE or Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics, the mission aims to put two Photon spacecraft in the Red Planet’s orbit “to understand the structure, composition, variability, and dynamics of Mars’ unique hybrid magnetosphere,” Rocket Lab noted in a release at the time. The company added that such science missions will also help with predicting solar storms for the Moon-bound Artemis human landing program, as NASA continues to build its database of radiation activity in deep space.
These are just the headline deals for Rocket Lab’s satellite components business, the company noted; they have also received a contract to design and build three Photon spacecraft for Varda Space Industries, as well as satellite components for “a number of large, undisclosed customers.” The quickly growing business appears to have received a lot of internal attention at Rocket Lab, which in turn led to the acquisition of Sinclair Interplanetary in 2020.
“From our unique perspective as an operational launch provider and spacecraft manufacturer, it quickly became apparent that the growth of the small satellite industry was being constrained by the supply of satellites components,” the statement said.
“Bespoke hardware necessary for small satellites have typically been very expensive, made in small quantities, and take a long time – sometimes years – to produce. Rocket Lab set out to change that by producing preeminent components at scale – a capability we strengthened with the acquisition of Sinclair Interplanetary in 2020.”
Rocket Lab made the decision to bring Sinclair Interplanetary into the fold because the Canadian company is a “leading provider of high-quality, flight-proven satellite components including reaction wheels and star trackers,” the statement continued. It noted Sinclair Interplanetary’s acquisition was directly attributable to the increased performance of Rocket Lab’s space systems business, disclosing the value in dollars – the 18% of total revenue described in the first half of 2021 equates to $5.4 million USD or $6.85 million CAD.
“Halfway through 2021, we had already surpassed the total number of satellite components produced by Sinclair annually, and we’re continuing to accelerate production to meet the needs of our customers,” the statement noted. “To that end, we recently announced that construction is underway on a new production line for reaction wheels, a key component for small satellites. Incorporating advanced metal machining centers optimized for unattended operation, automated production tools, and automated environmental testing workstations.”
Rocket Lab noted that they have already added 2,700 square feet of production facilities to Sinclair Interplanetary’s existing production facilities in Toronto, “enabling the expansion of the team to support higher production volume and enable R&D for new satellite hardware and products.” Going forward, Rocket Lab expects to add “more than 16 new roles” for the new production facility and growing Space Systems operations in 2021, although the location of these roles was not disclosed in the statement.
“We’re very excited about the growth of our space systems business, with Sinclair Interplanetary as an integral part of the team,” the statement concluded.