TAKING TO THE SKIES
WORDS: Liam Stretch
The Canterbury region has a long history of folks taking on the world with great ideas. An aerospace company with an innovative vision for the future is one of the latest to take on this mantle.
Kea Aerospace is based in central Christchurch and aims to send its solar-powered aircraft to the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
For those who didn’t take high school Science, the atmosphere is a little like an onion. It has layers. In one of those not-so-oniony layers is the stratosphere – approximately 20 kilometres above the Earth’s surface or 65,000 feet. It’s there that Kea Aerospace wants to send its flagship aircraft, the Kea Atmos.
The Kea Atmos will be the largest unmanned aircraft ever built in the Southern Hemisphere, with a wingspan of over 30 metres. It will be a green aircraft propelled by electric motors powered by hundreds of solar cells to collect enough energy from the sun each day to enable it to fly continuously for months.
Described as a game-changer for aerial imaging, the Atmos and its suite of equipment will be able to improve intelligence gathering on smart cities, disaster management, agriculture, and environmental and maritime monitoring. It trumps the capability of current piloted aircraft, satellites, and drones.
“We’re in a bit of a sweet spot in the stratosphere where we can actually be low enough and get high resolution. But also, we can get that broader coverage. And we’re not burning fuel, we’re not putting pilots in danger, and we’re flying above the weather in the jet streams,” CEO Mark Rocket says.
You may recognise the name, that’s because self-described ‘internet entrepreneur’ Mark Rocket has an impressive résumé when it comes to aerospace; he was one of the seed investors and former co-director of Rocket Lab.
Alongside his commercial experience, he was part of a group that began aerospace meetups in the city, which has now formed into Aerospace Christchurch, and they will hold their first national summit on 21 February.
A couple of things spur Mark on to succeed with Kea Aerospace; one is simply the project itself.
“It is such a super cool project to build the largest unmanned aircraft in the southern hemisphere. You know, it’s going to be a beautiful aircraft with incredible applications. I like the novelty of it. I like to do things that haven’t been done before.”
He also wants to support the emerging talent in Ōtautahi.
“A key motivation is that I saw all these great graduates coming out of the University of Canterbury, and they had very few local aerospace jobs to move into. So, they had to go to Auckland or to offshore aerospace companies.”
The Kea Atmos will be launched from Kaitōrete Spit on the banks of Lake Ellesmere Te Waihora as part of Project Tāwhaki. Project Tāwhaki is a partnership between Te Taumutu Rūnanga, Wairewa Rūnanga (together as Kaitōrete Limited) and the New Zealand Government to protect and rejuvenate the Kaitōrete environment while developing aerospace activities and research and development facilities.
As development continues, Mark’s eventual hope is that there will be fleets of Atmos aircraft operating around the globe with mission control based in Christchurch.