Terran Orbital (NYSE: LLAP) has rolled out a new lineup of seven, standard, satellite bus platforms.
More than a decade ago, Terran Orbital pioneered the creation of CubeSat standards — the firm is now establishing new benchmarks for satellite technology for the coming decade. These standards are built upon Terran Orbital’s manufacturing capabilities, featuring components and modules that can be readily swapped out to accommodate different bus sizes and configurations.
The seven bus platforms span the nano, micro, mini, and small classes. This new lineup of satellite configurations is derived from Terran Orbital’s long history of smallsats innovation and micro satellite bus designed and built for the U.S. Space Development Agency’s (SDA) recently launched Tranche 0 Transport Layer mission and the upcoming Tranche 1 mission. Terran Orbital’s full product line of seven, ITAR-compliant bus classes ranges from the largest, Enterprise, to the smallest, Triumph.
The Enterprise is specifically targeted to those customers who want a flat packing design to allow up to 24 vehicles per launch. It comes standard with Optical Inter Satellite Link and has a large, flat deck optimized for communications and RF payloads.
The Ambassador features the largest deck allowable by the ESPA-Grande standard for rideshare payloads. We expect it to be our top offering for the DoD/Intel community, allowing a large payload and optional
Type 1 encryption.
The Nebula is the commercialized version of the bus placed in orbit in last week’s SDA Transport Layer Tranche O launch in partnership with Lockheed Martin. It has an open deck plan to easily accommodate oddly shaped payloads with optional Type 1 encryption and can be configured for a 15 inch ESPA or 24 inch ESPA-Grande-capable launch vehicle.
The Excelsior is the smallest microsatellite in the product line, having the advantage of delivering higher power to payload than any of the nano models while still having the budget-friendly ability to launch two per ESPA port.
The Voyager is built with component redundancy to reduce risk and extend its lifetime in harsh environments beyond LEO. It has both GEO and Cislunar heritage and the radios are designed for compatibility with NASA’s Deep Space network.
The Renegade is a smallsat that can be configured as 12U or 16U for exceptionally long payloads and can accommodate up to a 19 cm. diameter optical imager. It has the best payload volume-to-bus ratio of the platforms, making it an economical solution for larger, research missions.
The Triumph is the smallest platform in the Terran Orbital standard bus lineup. It has unparalleled spacecraft agility, and with the most flight heritage of all platforms, it exemplifies the smaller, cheaper, faster mentality.
These reference platforms feature flexible architecture using common building blocks, allowing for wet launch masses of 14 to 1000 kg. They are based on designs with extensive flight heritage for various civil, defense, and commercial customers.
“With this announcement we are again setting the bar high with an industry leading product line. While we still offer fully custom platforms to meet unique specifications, we are creating new industry standards, and these standard platforms bring forth our vision to meet mission requirements at scale, drive down the cost of the satellite, and increase their functionality using standard components that roll up into configurations that quickly and effectively satisfy the needs of the DoD and research customer alike.” — Marc Bell, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, Terran Orbital