As Loft Orbital gears up to fly more complex missions, the company announced the purchase of new satellite bus inventory today designed to fly larger, more power hungry customer payloads.
“This signifies we have a lot of customer demand…that necessitates us having more buses,” Loft COO and cofounder Alex Greenberg told Payload. “This also signifies us moving upmarket into bigger payloads, specifically for US national security customers.”
By the numbers: Loft’s business model is predicated on the idea that satellite buses are becoming increasingly commoditized. Instead of building buses of its own, the company acts as a mission manager—helping operators select the best bus for their needs, and then supporting every step of the payload’s integration and operation on orbit.
The result is that Loft has become a major buyer of satellite buses. Since its founding in 2017, Loft has spent $100M+ on buses, according to Greenberg.
This latest bus purchase includes:
- Ten Longbow buses from Airbus Defence and Space;
- One Nova bus from Apex, as part of a contract with an option for Loft to procure up to 9 additional Novas down the line.
So far, Loft’s shelves have largely been filled by small buses that can carry less than 100 kg of payload. However, with the Apex Nova buy, Loft is signaling its entrance into more massive, defense-focused missions.
Nova, which flew to orbit for the first time on SpaceX’s Transporter-17 rideshare mission this month, can support up to 300 kg of payload, and deliver 1 kW of orbit-average power, making it a prime choice for Loft’s growing defense customer-base. Apex is scheduled to deliver Nova to Loft by October.
“Governments view space as a matter of national security, and so it’s important for them not just to buy data or rely on other nations for their security in space, they actually want to have their own infrastructure,” Greenberg said. “At Loft, we believe every country is eventually going to have at least a couple satellite constellations, and that is a lot of net new market that’s going to come online.”
What’s next: Loft doesn’t expect these new buses to sit on the shelf for long. At the start of the year, Loft had flown just six satellite missions to orbit, but the company expects to reach 30 operational satellites by the end of next year, according to Greenberg.
The increase is driven by the growing demand for constellations, as Loft customers move past one-off demonstrations and into fleet operations.
On this front, Loft has multiple constellations planning to take flight in the coming year, including a 10-sat EO constellation from Earth Daily, the eighth sat of which launched on Transporter-17; and the 10-sat Altair constellation through its Orbitworks joint venture with UAE-based Marlan Space, which will begin launching in October.
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