SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH — Kongsberg NanoAvionics is rolling out an upgrade to its MP42 line of satellite buses, including a new 500 kg platform which is now the company’s largest and most capable bus.
Andrew Swain, NanoAvionics director of US Business Development & Strategy, tells Via Satellite the move was driven by demand from both the market and current customers for more capability.
“We helped a lot of our existing customers scale their minimum viable products with our existing microsats and cubesats to prove their technologies. As they grow and scale, they need more capability, and so we’re providing that for them,” Swain said. “On the other hand, the market is moving in that direction. We’re getting a lot of requests and feedback from prospective customers where they want that greater degree of capability in a larger platform.”
The Gen-2 MP42 platform lineup is built on the MP42 flight heritage and includes upgrades across subsystems that allow for larger payloads, higher power, higher data throughput, and better pointing accuracy, Swain said. In particular, mission life has been extended from from five years in a 600 km SSO to seven years in a 750 km SSO.
The new platform is also suited for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, including optical imaging at resolutions greater than 50 cm, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and radio-frequency scanning and emitter geolocation for signals intelligence (SIGINT).
The new 500 kg-class MP42D can support payloads up to 250 kg in mass.
Swain cites that the majority of the company’s backlog is in the MP42 family, which debuted in 2021 as NanoAvionics expanded into microsats.
The company has already secured more than 10 million euro ($11.6 million) for programs with the new Gen-2 MP42 platforms. The first five have already been built or delivered to existing customers including Satlantis, SuperSharp, and an undisclosed commercial operator from Southeast Asia.
Other Gen-2 MP42 customers include Kreios Space, undisclosed government and defense customers, and parent company Kongsberg, which ordered three maritime surveillance satellites for its N3X constellation.
NanoAvionics is looking to expand its presence in the U.S. defense market, and this new upgraded lineup helps support the company in that goal, Swain said.
“Customers are looking for the economics of the smallsat that we can provide with our existing platforms, but customers in the defense space want the economics of the small satellite, but they also need a bit more capability,” he said. “This particular size class we think is kind of a sweet spot that meets a lot of customer needs.”
To support growth across Europe, the U.S. and the rest of the world, the company is also investing further in its manufacturing with Swain saying that NanoAvionics is close to breaking ground on a new serial production facility in Lithuania to scale the output of its microsat platforms from the tens and dozens to hundreds of platforms. That is set to be completed by 2028.
