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Blue Canyon Cuts Ribbon on New CubeSat Factory

Blue Canyon Cuts Ribbon on New CubeSat Factory. The Colorado facility will be manufacturing about 85 small spacecraft a year. On August 4, Lafayette, Colorado-based Blue Canyon Technologies LLC announced that it had opened another factory in nearby Boulder Blue Canyon Technologies LLC has opened a facility to increase CubeSat production from 50 to 85 a year. Credit: Blue Canyon

The Colorado facility will be manufacturing about 85 small spacecraft a year.

On August 4, Lafayette, Colorado-based Blue Canyon Technologies LLC announced that it had opened another factory in nearby Boulder to produce CubeSats. The company plans to use the new 31,000-square-foot facility to increase production from 50 to 85 nanosatellites a year by consolidating manufacturing efforts with certain CubeSat employees trained to build large spacecraft constellations. The CubeSats are 10 square centimeters per unit and are meant for proliferation in low-Earth orbit, or LEO.

Recently, three Blue Canyon CubeSat buses were launched aboard Virgin Orbit, and one of the satellites had the distinction of being the first Blue Canyon 12-unit CubeSat to carry 19 payloads to LEO.

“Our CubeSats are truly a groundbreaking product in small satellites and offer industry-leading pointing accuracy,” said John Carvo, executive director, CubeSats, Blue Canyon Technologies. “This new manufacturing facility allows us to produce at a larger scale, provide innovative solutions and deliver top-performing satellites to meet our customers’ needs.”

Blue Canyon opens a new CubeSat factory near Boulder, Colorado, with Boulder Chamber of Commerce officials in attendance. Credit: Blue Canyon

Blue Canyon opens a new CubeSat factory near Boulder, Colorado, with the Boulder Chamber of Commerce officials in attendance. Credit: Blue Canyon

The company is preparing to provide its largest constellation delivery so far with 18 integrated CubeSats for a commercial customer and several NASA launches, including the uncrewed Artemis 1 moon rocket scheduled for launch on August 29 and the four 6-unit CubeSats for the Starling LEO mission planned for the end of 2022.

A wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, Blue Canyon reportedly already has 38 CubeSats in various stages of development. The company includes four business units: CubeSats, Microsats, Components and Mission Operations.

“Blue Canyon’s CubeSat performance is industry leading with sub-arcsecond pointing accuracy and optimization for payload size, weight and power,” a company spokesperson stated.