New Zealand has unique opportunities in space. A few weeks ago, I wrote a post (which turned into a Newsroom piece) that featured a per capita plot of 2025 launches by the few countries that are capable of sending payloads to orbit.

Our standing on the global stage is anchored by Rocket Lab, which is now arguably one of the world’s top space companies. Its Neutron rocket will offer real competition to SpaceX and they are currently putting the finishing touches on two spacecraft that are bound for Mars.

That all makes for a mighty space kauri. But it would be even better for New Zealand to have a space ecosystem rather than a single, giant, tree. However, to make that happen we need to nurture new space enterprises. With that in mind, I have surveyed the state of play and put together a list of what I see as our six most promising saplings…

Hēki

Hēki is a high-temperature superconducting magnet that was launched to the International Space Station on Monday. This packs a remarkably strong magnetic field into a small package and builds on New Zealand’s deep heritage in superconductor science which began at the old DSIR in the 1990s and continues at the Paihau-Robinson Research Institute today. Hēki was built in Wellington and in the next couple of weeks it will be attached to the outside of the ISS. The goal is to “space qualify” the core technology needed for Kōkako, a new type of electric propulsion for satellites. (Hands up you if knew that we had world class superconductor research happening here in New Zealand?) 

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Space-based climate monitoring with photonic sensors 

This Otago-led project just received a major grant from the Endeavour Fund to develop novel sensors for monitoring ozone and other trace gases in the atmosphere.  A giant NASA satellite that currently does this is reaching the end of its life and the goal is to replace it with a microwave-oven-sized box launched by Rocket Lab’s Electron booster. This builds on expertise in photonics and quantum technology developed in New Zealand since the late 1980s and the aim is to deliver data that will be used in New Zealand and around the world. (Hands up if you know we had world class quantum science going on here?) 

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High-altitude uncrewed flight 

There are two major players here – Kea and Dawn. The former is building solar-powered high-altitude aircraft that can stay aloft for weeks, and the latter is constructing actual rocket-powered spaceplanes and selling both “rides” and complete systems. Between the two of them, they make New Zealand a force in this key emerging sector. 

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Space Ops 

From a base in Southland, Space Ops has built a successful business handling communications with orbiting spacecraft by filling what would otherwise be a quiet spot on the globe. Over the next decade there will be a communications bottleneck as multiple missions head to the Moon and Mars (even if not from New Zealand directly). Space Ops recently inherited the Warkworth 30m radio telescope which they can refurbish to support these missions.

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Proteins in Orbit  

Using the weightless environment of space to make materials which are impossible to create on Earth is a long term dream for the field but it is easier said than done. Led by Sarah Kessans at Canterbury, a New Zealand team (with some international collaborators) sent an experiment to the Space Station in 2024 to grow protein crystals which cannot be easily manufactured on Earth. They have support to develop the technology over the coming years, and it is definitely a story worth watching.

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Optical communications

New Zealand scientists are collaborating with the DLR – the German space agency – to communicate with spacecraft using laser beams rather than radio waves, vastly increasing download speeds. Building an optical groundstation in New Zealand will take advantage of our location along with local expertise in small-telescope optical astronomy and photonics. 

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What Can We Learn

These six examples range from revenue-generating firms to science experiments and each has its own special features. But when you look closely they have many things in common.

Firstly, they all have great teams with strong technical leadership.

In addition, they all aim to build a “deep niche” rather than simply developing generic capacity and grow from existing areas of excellence and/or leverage our geographical location and open skies. Paul Callaghan famously picked this pattern as the hallmark of New Zealand tech success stories and we are now seeing it play out in space.

If you are paying attention, you’ll also notice that one of the companies on my list is not, strictly speaking, a space company at all. A word New Zealanders will be hearing more often in the next few years is aerospace: Kea is building on the space industry just as our “space” companies are leveraging adjacent technical expertise.

Lastly, for every genuinely good project there are ten others that simply look good. Telling them apart takes time and skill. So it is no surprise to me that public investment that supports these projects mostly comes via peer-reviewed, tech-focused grant competitions rather than bureaucrats quietly attempting to pick winners.

And, now that we can see what works, my hope is that we can do more of it.

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CODA: This blog post is the first instalment of a short series, starting with the good news. Next up – how to spot bad ideas and what hasn’t worked out.