Dive Brief:
- Belgium-based Aerospacelab recently opened a satellite manufacturing facility in Torrance, California, according to a Sept. 5 press release.
- The facility can produce two satellites per week and is part of the company’s plan to meet both U.S. military and global aerospace market demands, the company said in its announcement.
- The Torrance plant comes a year after Aerospacelab expanded to the U.S., opening a branch in Palo Alto.
Dive Insight:
The Aerospacelab facility, with 35,000 square feet of advanced cleanroom environments, is strategically located near Vandenberg U.S. Space Force Base and Space Force Space Systems Command headquarters in the Santa Barbara and Los Angeles areas, respectively.
Aerospacelab is also working with other satellite manufacturers on projects. The company signed a subcontract with robotics and satellite systems company MDA Space in July for the Telesat Lightspeed constellation, a global network of 198 low earth orbit satellites. Telesat contracted MDA Space in August 2023 as the primary manufacturer for the project.
Aerospacelab will provide MDA Space with battery charge regulators, a critical high-power subsystem for the company’s Aurora constellation, a software satellite product. Their contract commits to delivering more than 200 units over three years, with the first scheduled by 2026.
Elsewhere, Aerospacelab broke ground in May on a factory in Charleroi, Belgium, set to have production capacity of up to 500 satellites a year. The satellite maker claims it will be the world's third largest satellite production facility once it begins operations in 2026.
The company has one other satellite manufacturing facility in Belgium, which opened in 2022, located in the city of Ottignies-Louvain-La-Neuve. The facility can produce up to 24 satellites a year.
Since its founding in 2018, Aerospacelab has launched eight satellites into orbit. Just this year, the aerospace contractor propelled four satellites carrying two new payloads — three radio frequency sensing and one very-high resolution.
Other satellite manufacturing companies are also launching in the U.S. Terran Orbital received a $2.4 billion contract to manufacture 300 low-Earth orbit satellites for Rivada Space Networks’ internet constellation last year. The first four satellites are set to launch in 2025, with 300 in the sky by mid-2026.
In August, France-based Safran Electronics and Defense announced plans to build up its U.S. manufacturing capabilities for small satellite propulsion systems in Colorado. The company wants to meet the increasing demand in both the commercial and defense sectors, as the North American small satellite market is expected to reach more than $5 billion by 2030, according to Safran’s press release.
