Mark Rocket

Mark Rocket is a New Zealand technology entrepreneur and aerospace pioneer, the founder and chief executive of Kea Aerospace, and one of the most established figures in the country’s growing aerospace sector.

His involvement in New Zealand space goes back to the beginning of its best-known company. Rocket was the Seed investor in Rocket Lab and served as its Co-director from 2007 to 2011, an early backer of Peter Beck’s then-tiny venture well before it became the multibillion-dollar company it is today. (The surname is genuine, he legally adopted “Rocket” in 2000, well before it became apt.) In 2025 he went a step further and became the first New Zealander to reach space himself, flying a suborbital mission aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard.

After his Rocket Lab years he went on to back and build a range of ventures, but his defining second act is Kea Aerospace, which he founded in Christchurch in 2018. The company is developing the Kea Atmos, a solar-powered, uncrewed aircraft designed to fly in the stratosphere for long periods, gathering high-resolution aerial imagery, the kind of work satellites do, but cheaper, closer and more flexible. It’s a different corner of aerospace from rockets or spaceplanes and a deliberately practical one.

Under Rocket’s leadership Kea reached a significant milestone in February 2025, when its Kea Atmos Mk1b became, by the company’s account, the first solar-powered aircraft designed and built in the Southern Hemisphere to reach the stratosphere, flying above 56,000 feet from the Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre near Christchurch. He has since been raising capital to build the larger, longer-endurance Mk2 and secured partnerships including a project with NASA’s Ames Research Center.

Beyond Kea, Rocket is a sector-builder: president of Aerospace New Zealand and a contributor to the government’s aerospace policy, he has been a consistent advocate for New Zealand and Christchurch in particular, as a serious place to do aerospace. He has spoken openly, too, about drawing lines around the work he will and won’t do, expressing comfort with defensive maritime-surveillance applications but not offensive military ones.

Rocket’s profile is noteworthy because he connects the origin of New Zealand’s space industry with its next generation: the seed investor and co-director who helped get Rocket Lab off the ground, the first New Zealander to reach space himself and the founder building a broader, deeper aerospace sector around Christchurch in the years since. His work sits alongside companies like Dawn Aerospace in a Christchurch aerospace scene that barely existed when he started.

Sources: NZ Herald · ChristchurchNZ · Wikipedia