LOFT ORBITAL has enlisted ANYWAVES’ services to carry the manufacturer’s S-band antenna onboard a future YAM smallsat — this is the first collaboration between the two space companies.
In early March, Nicolas Capet, ANYWAVES’ CEO, and Antoine de Chassy, LOFT ORBITAL’ s Co-founder and President, signed a partnership agreement at ANYWAVES’ headquarters. In addition to the delivery of two space antennas within one week, this first step exemplifies both companies’ willingness to enter into a strong partnership, with long-term prospects.
According to Capet, “This is a huge step having this level of confidence from one of our major customers. This is also an opportunity for significant commercial and business development between our two companies.”
“The meaning of this partnership with ANYWAVES stems from an intimate knowledge of the technology,” said de Chassy. “Each of us focuses on their area of expertise and that is how we can bring the cost and delays down which is exactly what the customers want right now.”
YAMs, short for ‘Yet Another Mission,’ fly various payloads or dedicated missions, such as precision positioning, Earth Observation (EO) and IoT. The bus is manufactured by LeoStella, a joint-venture between
TAS and Spaceflight, based in Seattle. As the previous Loft Orbital mission YAM2, YAM3 will carry several payloads from multiple customers, including Eutelsat and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Blackjack program.
ANYWAVES, a CNES (French Space Agency) spin off that was created in 2017, develops antennas for the satellite constellations market and designs and manufactures according to the space standards of a new generation of high quality antennas. ANYWAVES has tripled its work force within two years, put five of its products into orbit since the firm’s inception, sold more than 60 antennas and reached a 1 million euros turn-over in 2020.
Loft Orbital deploys and operates space infrastructure as a service, providing rapid, reliable, and simplified access to orbit for customer payloads. The company has developed the Payload Hub, a hardware and software interface which enables Loft Orbital to fly dedicated missions or multiple customer payloads simultaneously on a standard satellite bus design. The Payload Hub is a modular, bus agnostic and payload agnostic interface adapter that allows a plug-and-play approach to satellite missions. Together with the firm’s Orbital’s Cockpit Mission Control System, it is able to deliver unprecedented speed-to-orbit without compromising reliability or schedule for even the most demanding customer payloads. Loft Orbital has three missions planned for 2021 and quarterly missions in 2022.