The Lanteris 1300 GEO model. Photo: Lanteris Space Systems

The Maxar name is being retired, with two sides of the company moving forward with new identities. The spacecraft manufacturing business, formerly Maxar Space Systems, is now Lanteris Space Systems; and the imagery and sensing business, formerly Maxar Intelligence, is now Vantor. 

This comes about two years after the two businesses split into separate companies in September 2023 after Maxar was acquired and taken private by Advent International. 

“Timing was right to switch,” Lanteris CEO Chris Johnson tells Via Satellite. “We’ve been operating as two separate companies now for a while under private equity ownership with separate boards and separate goals and objectives, but we still shared a name. I think that was creating some confusion.”

Both companies are still owned by Advent International and will continue to operate as separate companies, with their new names. 

Vantor said the new name reflects a shift from solely a satellite imagery provider to an end-to-end spatial intelligence company. The company described its offering as multi-domain spatial intelligence solutions integrating data across satellites, drones, and ground-based assets to improve decision-making and drive autonomous operations. 

“We’re delivering end-to-end solutions capable of connecting sensor data from every domain, providing a unified intelligence picture that they can turn into a competitive advantage,” Vantor CEO Dan Smoot said in a statement. 

Manufacturing Shift to More Government Business

Johnson said the new brand comes at the right time for Lanteris, after delivering all six WorldView Legion satellites successfully to orbit, and the recent delivery of the first spacecraft buses to L3Harris for its subcontract on the Space Development Agency (SDA) constellation. 

Chris Johnson CEO of Lanteris, rebranded from Maxar Space Systems.

While Maxar is a well-known brand in the space industry, the manufacturing business has gone through a long series of names over various mergers and acquisitions from Philco in the 1950s, then Ford-Philco, Ford Aerospace and Space Systems/Loral, which was acquired by MDA in 2012 and later renamed Maxar.  

In recent years, the manufacturing business has taken on much more government business, Johnson said. Around five years ago it was primarily commercial, and it’s now a roughly 50/50 split between government and commercial. 

The spacecraft product line is the same, rebranded with the Lanteris name — the well-known Geostationary Orbit (GEO) platform Lanteris 1300, WorldView Legion-class Lanteris 500, and SDA-class Lanteris 300. 

The 300-class bus was an investment for the company to convert some of the production space used for its 1300 production and turn it into a smallsat factory. That production line is working to support the L3Harris work for the SDA, and Johnson said there are a number of ways it could support the Golden Dome missile defense initiative as well.

“We’ve been building GEO communications and other satellites in this factory for 60-plus years. In standing up that smallsat line with a clean slate, we took all of that understanding of how to do things correctly and industry-leading availability [along with] a forcing function to modernize those systems and tools,” Johnson said. “Now that we’ve implemented that on the 300, we are in the process of doing that across the entire factory.” 

While Lanteris has been intentional about how it moved to offer Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) capabilities with the 300 model, Johnson remains bullish on the future for GEO, particularly as new heavy launch vehicles coming online allow GEO to be a cost-effective augmentation for LEO. 

“GEO is going to come back,” Johnson said. “If you step back and look at the architecture to provide the right level of capability, you’ll have very large GEO overlay to support LEO constellations. Ultimately, you need large platforms with large apertures to get the data into the place where the people are.” 

Currently, he sees the overall market for GEO between eight and 12 satellites per year, with an addressable market for Lanteris to compete at around four to six satellites.

Lanteris did not jump into the software-defined satellite (SDS) market, which Johnson said was very intentional, pointing to delays that other manufacturers have experienced. “The amount of investment required for the market opportunity just didn’t make sense for our size company at that point,” he said. 

Now, he sees a second-mover advantage and Lanteris is making investments into the 1300 platform for a more digital offering. “We’re now starting to work with customers on a quick-to-market, reliable, and right-sized flexible capability. Not fully SDS, but still provide our customers a more reliable digital offering into the future,” Johnson said.