Facilities

Chemical Laboratory

Situated within Rocket Lab’s headquarters is a chemical laboratory used for preparation and formulation of all in-house developed materials. Rocket Lab uses these facilities to formulate, manufacture and develop innovative propellants, ablative heat shields and composite materials.

Manufacturing and Assembly

Rocket Lab operates a small manufacturing facility used for rapid prototyping of components and support for testing programs. More complex or flight articles are produced by Rocket Lab’s manufacturing partner RPM engineering. www.rpmtoolanddie.com. RPM operates a large state of the art machining facility with machine resources such as EDM wire cut, 5-axis CNC and other state-of-the-art machining and fabrication facilities.

Rocket Lab also has inspection, check-out and assembly facilities and a purpose-built and fitted clean room for carrying out payload integration, flight component check-outs and assembly of sensitive components.

Testing

To support Rocket Lab’s research and development programs, we have significant capabilities

• Static and Dynamic Instron universal testing machines
• 2-axis low frequency shaker table, enclosed in environmental chamber
• 2-axis high frequency table
• Servo-hydraulic controlled water impact rig
• Shock and vibration testing to MIL-109-E
• Oxy-Acetylene ablation test rig to ASTM E285 Standard

Wind Tunnels

To support Rocket Labs rapid development of flight vehicles the company operates a number of wind tunnels. These include a re-circulation low speed for centre of pressure and drag measurements and a high speed vertical tunnel with gimbals for use in the development of control systems.