Morgan Connaughton , VP of Marketing & Comms at Rocket Lab episode artwork

EPISODE · Dec 9, 2025 · 1H 1M

Morgan Connaughton , VP of Marketing & Comms at Rocket Lab

from Red Planet Live · host The Mars Society - Red Planet Live

🎙️ Exclusive ESCAPADE Mission Update with Rocket Lab’s Morgan ConnaughtonIn this episode, we sit down with Morgan Connaughton, Rocket Lab’s Vice President of Communications, for a wide-ranging and inspiring conversation about storytelling in spaceflight—and she brought us an EXCLUSIVE update straight from the ESCAPADE mission to Mars.Morgan shares the behind-the-scenes excitement as Rocket Lab successfully completed a brand-new 13-second trajectory correction burn on the Blue spacecraft, with Gold scheduled for December 8. She walks us through how her team plans communications years in advance, and how you can be intimately involved in the success of a mission without ever touching a piece of hardware.We explore Rocket Lab’s famously lean comms team—just seven people creating videos, graphics, mission names, PR, and social content with the same intensity as the engineers designing the rockets. Morgan also talks about the joy and chaos of going public, the challenge of maintaining culture across 3,000+ employees, and the values that guide Rocket Lab’s approach: fierce efficiency and doing the impossible.She reflects on the art of mission storytelling, the importance of visuals in space history (including why the Moon landing broadcast still matters), and the rise of aspiring rocket photographers in New Zealand capturing Electron’s launches.We also dive into fan-favorite topics like:How her team comes up with Rocket Lab’s legendary mission namesThe adrenaline of the helicopter catch attemptESCAPADE’s twin spacecraft, Blue and Gold, and their journey to study Mars’ magnetosphereMorgan’s path is a testament to creating opportunity through passion, vision, and storytelling.This is one of our most inspiring episodes yet—and Rocket Lab’s ESCAPADE exclusive makes it one for the history books.Morgan Connaughton's LinkedIN:https://nz.linkedin.com/in/morgan-connaughton-4a211835Rocket Labhttps://rocketlabcorp.com/Escapadehttps://science.nasa.gov/mission/escapade/

Episode metadata supplied by the publisher feed · Published Dec 9, 2025

Embed this episode

Ready to play

Morgan Connaughton , VP of Marketing & Comms at Rocket Lab

0:00 1:01:01

No transcript for this episode yet

We transcribe on demand. Request one and we'll notify you when it's ready — usually under 10 minutes.

No similar episodes found.

No similar podcasts found.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long is this episode of Red Planet Live?

This episode is 1 hour and 1 minute long.

When was this Red Planet Live episode published?

This episode was published on December 9, 2025.

Can I download this Red Planet Live episode?

Yes. Use the download control on the episode player to save the publisher-provided media file.
URL copied to clipboard!