Lockheed Martin opens factory to build smallsats on an assembly-line basis
Capitalism in space: As part of fulfilling a contract won from the Space Force, Lockheed Martin has now opened a new factory in Colorado expressly designed to build smallsats on an assembly-line basis.
Lockheed Martin’s 20,000-square-foot factory is located at the company’s Waterton campus near Denver, Colorado. It has six parallel assembly lines and capacity to manufacture 180 small satellites per year, Kevin Huttenhoff, Lockheed Martin’s senior manager for space data transport, told SpaceNews. The first satellites to be made at the facility are for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency. SDA plans to build a mesh network of hundreds of data transport and missile-detection sensor satellites in low Earth orbit.
Lockheed Martin in February 2022 won a $700 million contract to produce 42 communications satellites for SDA’s Transport Layer Tranche 1. The company in November 2020 also won a $187.5 million contract to manufacture 10 Transport Layer Tranche 0 satellites that are scheduled to launch later this month. The Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites — projected to launch in late 2024 — will be made at the new factory. The Tranche 0 satellites were assembled at a different facility where Lockheed Martin manufactures Global Positioning System (GPS) spacecraft.
The multiple assembly lines allows the company to configure each for a different customer and satellite, with one for example producing smallsats for a military contract while another produces smallsats for a commercial customer.
Of all the big space companies, Lockheed Martin has made the most moves quickly adapting to the new space market of new rockets and small satellites. Not only has it built this facility, it has been an major investor in several new smallsat rocket companies, including Rocket Lab and ABL. It also opened its first assembly-line smallsat factory in 2017.
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Capitalism in space: As part of fulfilling a contract won from the Space Force, Lockheed Martin has now opened a new factory in Colorado expressly designed to build smallsats on an assembly-line basis.
Lockheed Martin’s 20,000-square-foot factory is located at the company’s Waterton campus near Denver, Colorado. It has six parallel assembly lines and capacity to manufacture 180 small satellites per year, Kevin Huttenhoff, Lockheed Martin’s senior manager for space data transport, told SpaceNews. The first satellites to be made at the facility are for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency. SDA plans to build a mesh network of hundreds of data transport and missile-detection sensor satellites in low Earth orbit.
Lockheed Martin in February 2022 won a $700 million contract to produce 42 communications satellites for SDA’s Transport Layer Tranche 1. The company in November 2020 also won a $187.5 million contract to manufacture 10 Transport Layer Tranche 0 satellites that are scheduled to launch later this month. The Transport Layer Tranche 1 satellites — projected to launch in late 2024 — will be made at the new factory. The Tranche 0 satellites were assembled at a different facility where Lockheed Martin manufactures Global Positioning System (GPS) spacecraft.
The multiple assembly lines allows the company to configure each for a different customer and satellite, with one for example producing smallsats for a military contract while another produces smallsats for a commercial customer.
Of all the big space companies, Lockheed Martin has made the most moves quickly adapting to the new space market of new rockets and small satellites. Not only has it built this facility, it has been an major investor in several new smallsat rocket companies, including Rocket Lab and ABL. It also opened its first assembly-line smallsat factory in 2017.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
Good to see but 180 satellites a year does not impress me much. SpaceX launched that many Starlink V1.5s in just 3 flights (60 per flight) before cutting over to the new/bigger V2 minis which go up 22 at a time.
I will grant that this is likely intended to support many different missions which imposes more complexity, but presumably the core satellite bus, engine and fuel system, electrical system, solar arrays, etc. are all standardized. Otherwise it’s not really much of sn assembly line.
Every journey starts with a first step though, snd as Bob notes they are really the first of the legacy players to at least step off of the porch and out the front gate.
MDN wrote: “I will grant that this is likely intended to support many different missions which imposes more complexity, but presumably the core satellite bus, engine and fuel system, electrical system, solar arrays, etc. are all standardized. Otherwise it’s not really much of sn assembly line.”
Standardized satellite busses definitely simplify everything. However, the company reports having six different assembly lines (average of 30 satellites per year from each line, or one satellite every 12 days (roughly 1-3/4 weeks)), which would allow for mass assembly of up to six different busses. Automobile factories run somewhat similarly, where autos with different chassis are built on different assembly lines.
I think that we are all in agreement that Lockheed Martin is adapting to the new space economy. If only they can get their half-owned launch company, ULA, to also adapt to reusability, then that could become competitive, too.