Mahia's high-flying engineer

For a start, it is the only working farm where the space company Rocket Lab has a permanent rocket launch pad from where satellites are regularly sent into orbit.

The farm is also owned by a Māori trust called the Proprietors of Tawapata South, which runs 15,000su - a mix of sheep and cattle - and this year is a finalist in the prestigious Ahuwhenua Trophy competition for the top Māori sheep and beef farm.

And there is one more unique and amazing aspect to this piece of paradise that looks out over the vast Pacific Ocean. It's about the person who oversees the whole Rocket Lab operation - 37-year-old Luke Smith.

His Māori parents were both born on Mahia and their ancestors date way back to the early whalers who were based in the area, but before Luke was born in the 1980s, they decided to seek their fortune across the ditch in Australia. Luke's father was an engineer and that helped spark his interest in all things about space.

"I grew up fascinated by rockets - things such as the space shuttle, the Russian Soyuz programme and the International Space Station back in the early '90s. With dad being an engineer, he got me into playing with cars and stuff and I decided that once I left home, I would be an engineer," he told Rural News.

To follow his dream, he went to Newcastle University in Australia where he obtained an honours degree in mechanical engineering. One of his lecturers described him as an exceptionally dedicated and driven student who would go on to do great things. This he has done, with further study at Purdue University in the US.

"I first came to Rocket Lab in 2022. It's a hard company to get a job at and I think I applied about five times before I got a job as an engineer and then notched this amazing role," he says.

At the same time, coincidentally, his parents also moved back to NZ.

Today Smith's official title is LC1 or launch complex one and he runs the whole operation at the Mahia site. But he doesn't get to press the button that sends the rocket on its way into space - that's the job of the launch director. The rockets are not large, and the payloads are correspondingly small - about the size of a household microwave.

"When the rocket arrives on the site, it takes between 10 and 14 days to get it prepared for launch. My team basically tests the rocket and put all of the systems in place on the launch pad and that's when the launch director takes over," he says.

Since he's been at Mahia he's been involved in 28 launches with another one scheduled shortly.

Smith admits it can be a stressful and demanding job, but he's used to that and it's not unlike the oil and gas industry he had worke in previously. He says in both cases, you only have one chance to get things right.

Smith lives at Mahia, the land of his ancestors, and says living there and doing the job at Rocket Lab means a lot to him emotionally as well as in career terms. He says he is there because of the many special people who came before him and he never forgets this.

Smith is every bit Mahia's high flyer.