Recently, private space company Rocket Lab acquired Geost, a manufacturer of payloads for satellites. Its management makes no secret of the fact that it plans to become a contractor for the US Department of Defense and is securing reliable logistics chains to this end.
Rocket Lab and their acquisition
Rocket Lab recently spent $275 million to acquire a payload supplier for Geost spacecraft. This deal will enable them to have a reliable supply of electronic circuits if they decide to implement a large project.
And according to Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck, this is not the end; the company plans to continue buying the manufacturing facilities it needs to become a major universal provider of space services.
Rocket Lab began as a small New Zealand company that builds small rockets to launch light satellites into orbit. However, many things have changed since then, and the funds raised here are increasingly being spent on the acquisition of key technologies. Since 2020, a total of five different companies have been acquired and successfully vertically integrated.
These include Sinclair Interplanetary, which manufactures satellite equipment; Advanced Solutions Inc., a developer of software and guidance systems; Planetary Systems Corp., which builds satellite separation systems; and SolAero Holdings, a manufacturer of space-grade solar panels.
Plans for military contracts
Peter Beck openly states that Rocket Lab’s main goal at present is to secure military contracts and become a permanent contractor for the US Space Development Agency. However, this is not so simple, because there are already a bunch of large contractor companies there.
And the US military wants to deal with companies that already have ready-made solutions and reliable supply chains so that contracts are not disrupted due to the lack of certain components. And Rocket Lab is striving to become one of those companies.
The company is in the process of acquiring Mynaric, a German supplier of optical communication terminals used for laser links between satellites.
According to spacenews.com
