Loft Federal Orders Mynaric Lasercom Terminals for SDA Testbed
A rendering of a side to side comparison between CONDOR Mk2 (left) and CONDOR Mk3 (right) optical communications terminal. Photo: Mynaric
Mynaric has a new customer — Loft Federal, the government subsidiary of Loft Orbital, which ordered Mynaric laser terminals for its work on the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Experimental Testbed.
The companies announced Tuesday that Loft Federal ordered Mynaric CONDOR Mk3 terminals, with deliveries mostly scheduled for the first half of 2024. Mynaric received the order in late 2022 and previously counted it in its optical communications terminal backlog at the end of the year. The Mk3 is the next-generation Mynaric optical communications terminal for spacecraft after Mk2, and it is compatible with the SDA’s interoperability standard for lasercom terminals.
Loft Federal announced last month that it will integrate the spacecraft platform for Ball Aerospace’s SDA Experimental Testbed, or NExT, contract. The NExT testbed is not part of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tranche architecture, but will demonstrate low-latency data transport and beyond line-of-sight command and control.
SDA awarded Ball Aerospace the NExT contract in October 2022, to build 10 satellites and accompanying ground systems — worth up to $176 million.
Loft Federal will perform spacecraft integration and testing, procure commercial launch services, oversee the launch campaign, and operate the constellation on orbit. The constellation will use the Longbow satellite platform procured from Airbus OneWeb Satellites, based on the OneWeb satellite bus.
“The CONDOR Mk3 terminal enables us to provide reliable performance on Longbow, our turnkey satellite platform,” said John Eterno, general manager at Loft Federal. “By using technologies like these that are commercial and produced at scale, we can deliver fast and simple operations on orbit for SDA NExT.”
Mynaric is also supplying lasercom terminals to Northrop Grumman for the SDA’s Tranche 1 Transport and Tracking Layers.