New Lockheed Martin Smallsat Facility Will Support SDA Contract 

Lockheed Martin’s Tranche 0 Transport Layer satellites seen in one of the company’s processing facilities. This is not an image of the new facility. Photo: Lockheed Martin

Lockheed Martin is opening a new smallsat processing facility in Colorado to support the company’s Space Development Agency (SDA) contract and capitalize on other smallsat opportunities. Lockheed announced the new 20,000-square-foot low bay clean room on Monday. 

The Tranche 1 Transport Layer (T1TL) satellites will be the first anchor customer for the facility, Chris Winslett, Lockheed Martin’s director for the SDA Transport Layer programs, tells Via Satellite. 

“As we looked at the market as it moves to proliferated LEO satellites, our experiences building the Tranche 0 Transport Layer satellites, it was pretty clear we needed the facility to be able to produce these types of satellites. As we went into the T1TL proposal, the company decided to invest in this facility. We can make not only the T1TL satellites, but any other satellites that are in this class of smallsats,” he said. 

Lockheed Martin is contracted to build 42 satellites for the SDA’s T1TL and has subcontracted Terran Orbital to build the satellite buses. Winslett said Terran Orbital will perform full integration and testing of the T1Tl buses and deliver them to Lockheed’s new facility. Lockheed will then integrate and test the payloads, integrate the bus and payload, and perform full satellite testing. 

The facility is designed to produce 180 satellites of the T1TL size per year. It is built to handle different levels of classification and can be split from a SCIF to unclassified. It has six scalable parallel assembly lines and can accommodate all stages of smallsat development, including spacecraft-level functional and performance testing.

The facility has been constructed and Lockheed is currently moving in electrical and mechanical support equipment, and it will be operational later this year. 

It is an investment in Lockheed’s ability to take advantage of the growing demand for smallsat programs, Kevin Huttenhoff, Lockheed Martin’s senior manager for Space Data Transport, tells Via Satellite.

“We have seen the marketplace transitioning and there’s certainly an opportunity with all sizes of satellites and with all orbits. The SDA Transport layers is one of the things that we’re running through the system, but there’s a lot of opportunity between commercial opportunities, U.S. government opportunities, international opportunities — everybody’s looking at the smallsat realm. We made the investment, we’re well-positioned in order to help answer that call.”