Dragonfly Aerospace has delivered a customized Gecko electro-optical imager to Loft Orbital to fly on that firm’s YAM-3 satellite that is due to launch in Q2 of 2021.
The Gecko camera is an easy-to-integrate imaging solution with a compact design and includes large built-in mass storage. Its reliable performance comes from its mature flight-proven electronics and ruggedized optics.
This imager will be mounted to the exterior of the satellite and will be used to support tip-and-cue missions and demonstrations for customers.
Loft Orbital has two missions planned for 2021 and quarterly missions planned to start in 2022. The Gecko imager will be launched along with several customer payloads, including DARPA’s Sagittarius A*, a demonstration of the Blackjack Pit Boss mission system and a Eutelsat Internet of Things demonstration mission.
“Dragonfly Aerospace is proud to be able to deliver one of our most popular products to Loft Orbital for their unique YAM program. Our strategy is to partner with great companies from around the world to bring our vision of persistent high-quality imaging of the Earth to fruition. This mission with Loft Orbital is another step in the right direction.” Dragonfly Aerospace CEO Bryan Dean stated.
We are very excited to include the Gecko imager on our spacecraft,” said Loft Orbital CEO Pierre-Damien Vaujour. “It will provide innovative additional capabilities to support customers’ missions by enabling them to operate in ways that would not be possible without it.”
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 Loft 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.