Dawn Aerospace Wins Blue Canyon’s X-SAT Saturn-Class Propulsion Business
Dawn Aerospace, a Netherlands-, New Zealand-and U.S.-based space transportation company, has been selected by Blue Canyon Technologies to provide turnkey chemical propulsion systems for the X-SAT Saturn satellite bus. Dawn will supply thrusters, tanks, control electronics, and full-service support in logistics and propellant loading for the ESPA Grande-class satellite.
Blue Canyon Technologies LLC (BCT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, recently celebrated its first year with Raytheon Intelligence & Space (RI&S). The investment from RI&S saw BCT invest heavily in high-volume manufacturing to enable concurrent production of 60-plus spacecraft. The company has scaled production of its CubeSat, ESPA, and ESPA Grande Microsat buses along with its components’ business to expedite spacecraft production for its clients, including NASA, U.S. Department of Defense, and many others.
“We are moving fast, and we need suppliers that can match our cadence and quality,” Stephen Steg, CEO of BCT said. “The in-space-heritage, creative thinking and solutions-focused approach we’ve seen from Dawn give us great confidence in their ability to deliver.”
“Through a modular approach, we use standardized components and production processes, including additive manufacturing, to provide custom turnkey systems in a fraction of the time and cost of our competition,” Dawn Aerospace co-founder, and Chief Revenue Officer Jeroen Wink said. “We typically deliver the first batch of flight units within 12 months, then six months or less for recurring units thereafter.”
Dawn recently announced it had been contracted to produce more than 100 thrusters for clients across the U.S., Europe, Japan, India, and Indonesia. The company also has propulsion contracts for a series of constellations, including Pixxel’s hyperspectral imaging constellation and the Indonesian Space Agency’s (LAPAN) early-tsunami warning constellation. Other contracts include the continued supply for a series of Orbital Transfer Vehicles, such as D-Orbit’s ION spacecraft and UARX’s OSSIE spacecraft.
“We are investing heavily in our people and facilities,” Wink said. “With substantial flight heritage now under our belt on multiple missions, we are scaling to meet demand.”
Blue Canyon’s X-SAT microsatellite buses offer a compact profile designed to maximize volume, mass, and power, and carry payloads up to 200 kilograms. These buses are used by a variety of customers and are built to accommodate all types of unique missions.