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December 21st, 2021
Media Release: Kea Aerospace Achieves Longest Endurance UAV Flight In New Zealand On Sunday 19th December Kea Aerospace has recorded the longest known flight for an unmanned aircraft in New Zealand, in an electric-powered flight above Kaitōrete, near Christchurch. The battery and solar-powered vehicle flew non-stop for 14 hours and 3 minutes, beating the previous […]
October 10th, 2021
Kea Aerospace is building a solar-powered, unmanned aircraft that can fly in the stratosphere continuously for months at a time. The zero-emission aircraft, called the Kea Atmos, will carry a suite of imagery equipment that will be game-changing for many industries, vastly improving intelligence for applications such as smart cities, precision agriculture, disaster management and […]
June 11th, 2021
By Mark Rocket November last year, we publicly launched our company, along with the stratospheric project we’re working on and our involvement with New Zealand’s Airspace Integration Trials. Since then, a few people have asked how we got started, so here’s the story of Kea Aerospace’s origins. In 2007, I started commercial operations of Rocket […]
April 13th, 2021
New Zealand-DLR Joint Research Programme In 2018 MBIE and DLR signed a Letter of Intent to enable joint research collaboration. MBIE invited proposals for feasibility studies under “Catalyst: Strategic for feasibility studies with the German Aerospace Center (DLR)” in the areas of propulsion, space communications and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) technologies. MBIE has announced the […]
November 19th, 2020
Some media stories after Kea Aerospace’s company launch: Newshub / TV3: Kea Aerospace solar-power aircraft a ‘game changer’ for aerial imaging Stuff: NZ company aims to become ‘Uber of aerial intelligence’ with its solar-powered aircraft NZ Herald: Unmanned aircraft being developed in Christchurch BusinessDesk: Rocket Lab co-founder seeks $3m for stratospheric aircraft RNZ: Christchurch company’s […]
November 18th, 2020
At 11am today, Kea Aerospace announced the stratospheric aircraft development program for the ‘Kea Atmos’ and acceptance into the Airspace Integration Trials run by MBIE. A special thank you to Hon. Minister Megan Woods and Lianne Dalziel, Mayor of Christchurch for their talks and to Spark for hosting the event at their superb Spark Square […]
November 7th, 2020
Roughly 80% of marine and coastal pollution originates on land – including agricultural run-off, pesticides, plastics and untreated sewage (reference). However, throughout the world, inland waterways and coastal regions are largely unmonitored and under-characterised. The dynamic nature and complexity of inland and coastal environments provide a challenge for satellite remote-sensing, while airborne missions are generally […]
Despite a proliferation in spaceborne assets, large knowledge gaps remain due to our inability to adequately monitor critical dynamic processes at relevant spatiotemporal scales and at sufficient quality. The large area/long term persistent monitoring capability of a HAP (High Altitude Platform) coupled with state-of-the-art remote-sensing has the potential to transcend that gap enabling new science […]
November 6th, 2020
Marçal Sanmartí has written a well-researched review of New Zealand’s space industry for The Space Review. Entitled “Is the New Zealand commercial space success story a model for other countries?“, it’s well worth a read. Rocket Lab’s ELaNa19 Liftoff Photo credit: Trevor Mahlmann
October 24th, 2020
High Altitude Testing Real tests are the bread and butter of aerospace engineering. There are many things that cannot be simulated or tested in a limited lab environment. Unfortunately, some aerospace regulations can make certain flight tests extremely complicated until a robust risk mitigation process has been worked through. The area of testing unmanned aircraft […]
