Kaitorete Spit Photo: Supplied / Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre
American company Space Scout has announced a deal to fly out of Kaitorete Spit in Canterbury.
The Tāwhaki National Aerospace Centre has been struggling with early efforts to attract customers, and documents show the government - unhappy at the lack of international customers - had refused the agency's proposal for more funding.
In a deal announced overnight, Virginia firm Space Scout said it would put its satellite-spotting cameras on the unpiloted high-flying plane being developed by local firm Dawn Aerospace.
The first of several test flights is set for November from Kaitorete's new 1km-long, taxpayer-funded runway.
Dawn's Aurora plane was set to go much higher - and into more useful territory for Scout - next year, Dawn's chief executive Stefan Powell said.
"This is already such an exciting technology for them that they want to get their payload on board as fast as possible to figure out if this is really feasible," Powell told RNZ on Friday afternoon.
"This is game-changing technology for them."
A proof of concept mission from Glentanner Aerodrome. Photo: Supplied / Space Scout
Scout's offering is in the field of what the Pentagon's space wing, US Space Force, calls "space domain awareness" or SDA.
"This would be a first-of-its-kind," Scout's chief executive Philip Hover-Smoot said.
Dawn's plane only needs a runway, not a rocket launchpad of the type that early MBIE business plans for Tāwhaki envisaged might be already being built by now.
Tāwhaki has warned the government that lower funding would undermine investor confidence in New Zealand's aerospace industry.
However, Powell said: "My confidence is underpinned by the conversations we've been having with Tāwhaki themselves and with ministers ... They do have a commitment to what Dawn needs, that's enough for us at least in the short and medium term ... the runway is there, the hangar is going up now."
Spaceports could be slow to set up, then snowball.
"This is a slow industry, it's not going to spool up instantly," he said.
"Perhaps just slightly shortsighted expectations ... it's not like you put up a runway and suddenly, two months later everybody's going to show up on your doorstep.
"But the potential is massive, this is something that just snowballs over decades."
Space Scout already has space domain awareness contracts with the Pentagon, with its optical sensors catching the military's eye, according to US industry reports. It is not clear where or if the Dawn deal might fit with that.
The US military is engaged in a big push since 2022, through to 2027, to bring more commercial companies and their research and development into the defence fold, citing the need for rapid expansion to counter China. New Zealand's Rocket Lab also has a lot of Pentagon contracts that launch out of the US.
Powell said he did not know if Dawn's work with Space Scout was part of a Pentagon project - "we don't know ... we're not privy to that information" - and he had not asked Scout.
"No, for now this is a technology demonstration," Powell said.
SDA was "absolutely a dual-use technology, that means it has wide civil and defence applications", he added.
"There might be reasons you'd want to observe a satellite doing nefarious things, there's also very good reasons you'd want to observe a satellite that's had a mechanical issue.
"Our internal policy on this is focusing on 'not weaponisation' of what we are doing, and this is not weaponisation, it's very clear, this is a camera payload ... so we would be comfortable with that."
The Taxpayers' Union, in a statement not accounting for the Dawn deal, said it congratulated Space Minister Judith Collins for rejecting further funding for Tāwhaki.
"The failure of the aerospace site to attract international investors, despite $30 million in taxpayer funding demonstrates that it's never a good idea to let politicians and bureaucrats gamble taxpayer money on private ventures," a spokesperson Connor Molloy said.