Keynote Speech - Stefan Powell at AerospaceNZ Summit

Written By Annelies Powell

In this keynote, “The Not-So-Trodden Path to Reusability” for Aerospace New Zealand, CEO Stefan Powell traces how Dawn’s story really began: breaking the European student rocket altitude record (21.5 km) with a hybrid engine — serious deep tech, and iterative innovation on rockets.

This was back in 2015, when the soon-to-be founders could see the coming hockey-stick growth in satellites, yet it wasn’t obvious that rockets were the scalable platform. Instead, Dawn turned its know-how into non-toxic, high-performance satellite propulsion — a solid business strong enough to fund a far bigger ambition: a reusable spaceplane.

Fast forward to 2025 and Dawn has 170+ thrusters on 40+ satellites and 62 flights of its suborbital Aurora spaceplane. The holy grail now in sight: aircraft-like reusability, reliability and safety for access to space.

Why Dawn? Why Aurora? Why New Zealand? Watch to find out.

Date of Keynote Speech: 8 October 2025


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