Terran Orbital acquires new satellite development facility

Terran Orbital, the parent company of Tyvak and PredaSAR, has leased a new four-story facility in Irvine, California, to house satellite design, engineering and development. Terran Orbital will continue to manufacture satellites at a separate Irvine facility, which the company is expanding to support its “robust pipeline,” according to a Sept. 22 news release. Terran Orbital is growing rapidly, both in terms of its workforce and facilities, due to strong demand from government and commercial customers, Marc Bell, Terran Orbital co-founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. Terran Orbital’s new Irvine facility covers nearly 8,262 square meters. “The new space will significantly increase our operational efficiency and permit us to continue to expand our workforce at a rapidly accelerating pace, while also allowing us to expand our manufacturing capacity at our current location,” Bell said in a statement. One of Tyvak’s recent orders was from Lockheed Martin, a Terran Orbital investor. Lockheed is buying a pair of 12-unit cubesats for LINUSS, short for Lockheed Martin In-space Upgrade Satellite System, to demonstrate satellite servicing in geosynchronous orbit. Tyvak also developed and built the spacecraft bus for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), a satellite destined for the same orbit as the lunar Gateway. CAPSTONE is scheduled to launch later this year on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from New Zealand.

CAPSTONE, a lunar cubesat developed by Advanced Space for NASA, will launch in the fourth quarter on an Electron rocket from New Zealand, not Virginia as originally planned. Credit: Advanced Space/Tyvak, a Terran Orbital Company