Rocket built in Huntington Beach is set to blast into space Friday from New Zealand

A rocket built in Huntington Beach is expected to lift into space Friday from manufacturer Rocket Lab’s launch pad in New Zealand.

The launch will mark the company’s first fully commercial flight into space and includes Irvine01, a miniaturized satellite for space research created by the Irvine CubeSat STEM program, an effort by more than 160 students from six Irvine high schools to engineer and launch a nano-satellite into orbit.

The launch was originally scheduled for April or May but was postponed because of “unusual behavior” in a motor controller during a rehearsal.

Rocket Lab aims to develop and launch rockets with small payloads at a fraction of the cost of other launch services, according to its website. Prices vary from thousands of dollars to several million, depending on the complexity.

Before rockets are prepped for launch in New Zealand, manufacturing is done at the company’s 3-acre headquarters in Huntington Beach, where the goal is to create a rocket engine every 24 hours, said mission manager Daniel Gillies.

Gillies oversees all aspects of missions, including potential payloads, guiding a customer interested in booking a launch and the final deployment into orbit. He also helps manage launch livestreams on the Rocket Lab website, YouTube and Facebook.

Engines are created using 3-D printers. An engine starts as metallic powder, Gillies said, and a laser passes over a pattern to build the engine layer by later until it’s set. The body of the rocket is made of carbon fiber.

“Almost all rockets that exist today are metal,” Gillies said. “They’re heavier and require specialized assembly practices. Ours is strong, lightweight and innovative.”

Gillies said the company strives to serve the small-satellite market, where “a lot of good work can be done in low orbit,” such as collecting imagery of the planet.

For this launch, called “It’s Business Time,” the satellite has a low-resolution camera that will take pictures of Venus, bright stars and other celestial objects. The images will help students collect data to calculate distances to planets and determine the accuracy of the satellite.

Archana Jain, an engineering teacher and CubeSat mentor at Irvine High School, said the project showed her students that careers in engineering aren’t just about “crunching numbers.”

“My students are learning that there are other areas of engineering, such as systems engineering, where you see the big picture, or marketing,” Jain said. “All different talents are needed. You can have a STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] career without the stereotypical role many people think an engineer plays.”

To watch the livestream of Friday’s launch, scheduled for 5:30 p.m. PDT, visit rocketlabusa.com/live-stream.

Priscella.Vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscella