Smallsat manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies LLC (“BCT” or “Blue Canyon”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, has celebrated the grand opening of the company’s new cubesat factory in Boulder, Colorado, with members of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
The expanded 31,000-square-foot facility consolidates manufacturing efforts with dedicated cubesat employees to build large spacecraft constellations and increase production from 50 to 85 cubesats, optimized for payload size, weight, and power (SWaP), a year. Currently, the company has 38 cubesats in various stages of design, assembly and test.
Recently, three Blue Canyon cubesat buses were launched aboard Virgin Orbit. One of the satellites had the distinction of being the first Blue Canyon 12U cubesat to carry 19 payloads to LEO. The company looks forward to providing the firm’s largest constellation delivery with 18 integrated cubesats for a commercial customer and several NASA launches, including the uncrewed Artemis 1 moon rocket scheduled for August 29 and Starling at the end of 2022.
Since 2020, Raytheon Technologies has invested more than $1 billion in smallsats, space hardware, constellation management and onboard processing — technologies that will help define the future of space. This new cubesat factory is just one example of scaling production and delivering solutions faster.
“Our cubesats are truly a groundbreaking product in small satellites and offer industry-leading pointing accuracy,” said John Carvo, executive director of cubesats at 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 Technologies (BCT), a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, is comprised of four business units: cubesats, microsats, components, and mission operations. BCT offers a diverse portfolio of innovative, reliable and affordable spacecraft and components that enable a broad range of missions and technological advancements for the new space economy. The company currently supports numerous unique missions with ovemore thanr 100 cumulative spacecraft orders. Microsatellites are manufactured at the 80,000 sq. ft .Lafayette facility and cubesats and components are manufactured in 60,000 sq ft of dedicated facilities in Boulder, Colorado. BCT has supported missions for the U.S. Air Force, NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and provided the Attitude Control Systems for the first interplanetary CubeSats, which successfully traveled to Mars. The company has been recognized with awards from Inc. Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies, the Best in Biz Award and the 2020 Tibbetts Award.
