Rocket Lab has proven that it\u2019s much more than a launch company. One glance at the company\u2019s most recent earnings presentation shows as much: its space systems business, which designs, manufactures and sells satellite components and spacecraft, brought in over 70% of company revenue compared to launch in 2022, at $150.3 million versus $60.7 million, respectively.<\/p>\n

The space systems business \u2014 whose products include star trackers, reaction wheels, solar power systems, separation systems and more \u2014 also saw a massive growth in revenue, increasing by 239% year-over-year. To meet this growing demand, the company further announced last year that it was building out new manufacturing capabilities for reaction wheels, in particular.<\/p>\n

The investment is paying off: It appears that Rocket Lab has landed a contract to provide reaction wheels to an unnamed mega constellation customer. The company said as much in a February press release announcing a new 12Nms reaction wheel product, saying that the wheel is \u201ccurrently planned for flight with an undisclosed large mega constellation customer.\u201d<\/p>\n

More recently, Rocket Lab CFO Adam Spice added more color to this statement, revealing that the deal is worth \u201cthousands\u201d of reaction wheels per year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe entered into an agreement with a mega constellation where it\u2019s thousands of reaction wheels per year and much bigger reaction wheels,\u201d Spice said at Cowen\u2019s 44th Annual Aerospace\/Defense and Industrials Conference in February. \u201cWhat that allowed us to do is build a dedicated high-volume production facility in New Zealand and we brought the cost down by almost an order of magnitude on those wheels.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a Bank of America event this Tuesday, Spice reiterated the enormity of the deal: \u201cWe secured a contract with a mega constellation customer where we\u2019ll ship two or three thousand reaction wheels per year to one customer.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the company has not publicly disclosed the name of this customer \u2014 and declined to comment on the matter to TechCrunch, citing commercial sensitivity \u2014 there\u2019s only a handful of known possibilities. Amazon\u2019s Project Kuiper is one likely candidate, and OneWeb\u2019s growing network could plausibly be another. SpaceX has demonstrated that it wants to stay in-house as much as possible for its production stack, however, so Starlink isn\u2019t likely.<\/p>\n