Blue Canyon Tech

Exotrail signed its first contract with Blue Canyon Technologies, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies. The U.S. based small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider selected Exotrail, an end-to-end space mobility solutions provider, to embark Exotrail’s spaceware™ propulsion systems aboard the company’s Venus-class microsatellite platform, which will be used for NASA’s INCUS mission. 

Three Exotrail spaceware™ flight models will be delivered for the American scientific mission, aiming to study convective storm formation and their effects on weather and climate change. The mission is expected to launch in 2026. 

Exotrail’s spaceware™ portfolio, with nano, micro, mini and cluster product configurations, is a flexible, high-thrust electric Hall-effect propulsion system for satellites ranging from 10 to 1,000 kg. With its high thrust capability and modularity, spaceware™ drastically improves satellite deployment, increases service performance, and helps reduce space pollution.

“Exotrail is a leading provider of robust Micro Hall-Effect Thruster technology capable of reliable and consistent performance needed for this mission. We are excited to see the capabilities they will bring to our Venus-class microsat platform and the mission goals that we can achieve together.”, said Jeff Watts, General Manager for Blue Canyon Technologies.  

As the second contract signed with a US-based satellite manufacturer since the start of 2023, Exotrail’s momentum in the region is ramping up in line with its strategy of rapid international expansion.

“The Exotrail team is extremely proud of this new contract. Working with the BCT team for a NASA JPL mission is a privilege. It not only underlines the relevance of our spaceware™ solutions for a critical space asset but is also a way for Exotrail to contribute to a key mission, making life safer on Earth and monitoring climate change.” said Jean Luc Maria, Exotrail’s CEO.

About Exotrail 

Exotrail is an end-to-end space mobility operator. The company offers customers the ability to define their space mobility needs with the spacestudio™ mission analysis software, meet those needs with spaceware™ onboard propulsion systems and spacedrop™ in-space mobility services, and operate their solutions with the spacetower™ software. This complete mobility offering called mobilityhub™ allows satellites to optimize their deployment, increase their service performance, and reduce space pollution. Exotrail was incorporated in 2017 and has secured over 70M€ of funding. The company has more than 20 customers in North America, Europe and Asia. Exotrail’s team is expanding quickly and consists, as of today, of more than 100 passionate people operating out of two locations in France: Toulouse and Massy (suburb of Paris), and Portland, OR in the USA. More information: https://www.exotrail.com/

About Blue Canyon Technologies 

Blue Canyon Technologies (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 over 100 cumulative spacecraft orders.  

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com. You can follow the company on LinkedIn here or Instagram here.

Colorado State University, local engineering companies tapped for NASA’s Investigation of Convective UpdraftS (INCUS)

Alex Edwards, The Gazette

Tired of the nebulous possibilities of weather reports in Colorado? Well, hear me and rejoice: Researchers at Colorado State University will lead a NASA mission to provide never-before-seen data that should make weather forecasting more reliable.

The mission is called the Investigation of Convective UpdraftS (INCUS) and will be the third NASA Earth Ventures mission. It will cost $177 million, and feature three small satellites built by Colorado companies. The INCUS mission will use radar to observe thunderstorms worldwide and watch how air and water particles interact in the upper atmosphere to create them. Colorado State University will be the research institution hosting the science data center at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere.

INCUS consists of three small satellites which will follow one another very closely. The gap between the satellites is 30 seconds between the first and second and 90 between the second and third. The trio of satellites will complete about 50 orbits per day, says Kristen Rasmussen, an associate professor at Colorado State University’s department of atmospheric science. She is a coprincipal investigator for the INCUS mission. Susan van den Heever, a university distinguished professor at CSU, is the principal investigator but was unable to comment on this story.

“We are hoping to look at storms of all shapes and sizes, from thunderstorms with very small clouds all the way up to severe weather supercells that produce tornadoes, tropical cyclones and hurricanes,” Rasmussen said. “INCUS will try to estimate how much mass, air and water, is being moved up in the vertical as a result of updrafts.”

The movement of air and water up into the atmosphere – called convective mass flux – affects everything from numerical weather prediction models to climate models, Rasmussen said. This movement acts as the engine that drives storms and INCUS will be able to provide a look into that engine so scientists can see the nitty gritty insides.

But observing convective mass flux requires effective radar that can be easily stowed and deployed in a space no larger than a microwave. That’s where Tendeg, a Louisville based space company that specializes in deployable radar dishes comes in.

“We use a material called mesh, a gold-plated wire which is knit into a pattern that allows it to be really elastic and stretchy,” Gregg Freebury, the co-founder, CEO and principal engineer at Tendeg, said. “Because it acts more like a fabric we can fold it and not damage it, taking a three-meter antenna and packaging it into something that’s only 20 centimeters wide.”

The benefit of the plating also results in a very reflective surface as far as radio frequencies are concerned. This gives the dish several advantages in low earth orbits, but key to a low earth orbit satellite, which INCUS will be, is low atmospheric drag. This means the satellites using a Tendeg dish can stay in orbit longer and carry less fuel should they need to push themselves to a higher altitude and avoid crashing through the atmosphere.

Mesh is the most-used material on Tendeg’s dishes. It also has the advantage of being low mass and as previously mentioned, low volume. Mass and volume are both part of the physics-based puzzle engineers have to solve before launching something into space, though Freebury said mass is becoming less and less of a concern.

While the dish is but one piece of this puzzle, there’s a lot more to the INCUS mission than a radar system. But rather than creating new instruments, which would drive up the cost, researchers at CSU looked to make use of proven tech demos. Specifically, they wanted to combine previous space-borne precipitation radars first flown in 1997 with the homegrown Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems (TEMPEST) satellite.

“Our strategy was to take these two proven technologies that already had successful space flights, that already collected data, and combine them,” Rasmussen said. “The radars flew in space on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring and the Global Precipitation Measurement missions… These two satellites with precipitation radars have completely revolutionized our understanding of clouds and precipitation.”

The mission of making this all work falls to Lafayette based Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), a subsidiary of Raytheon. The small company of just under 500 employees won the contract sent out by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to build the three satellites needed for INCUS on April 13.

Where CSU primarily handles the science side of the INCUS mission, JPL handles the hardware side, which includes selecting manufacturing companies like BCT.

Blue Canyon Technologies will use their Venus-type bus, which BCT employees are excited to demonstrate the capabilities of. A spacecraft bus enables communication across all systems onboard a satellite, and among other things, the bus keeps a craft in orbit, reports on mission health, and “points you in the right direction,” according to John Valdez, the INCUS program manager at BCT. 

As the mission became more concrete, the teams launched studies to outline detailed plans and requirements. At this time, BCT and JPL realized BCT could have more to offer than just the satellite bus.

“We started getting involved in mission meetings and as we progress through the studies and into the design phases, Blue Canyon’s responsibility grew,” he said. “And to me that’s just fantastic, I mean, we’ve been able to link all the services and everything that we offer with this one specific mission for JPL and CSU.”

The INCUS mission does not have a launch vehicle selected yet. It will likely launch in 2027.

[view original article here]

Blue Canyon’s Saturn-class microsat bus will help detect methane gas leaks across the globe. Watch as we deliver the completed bus for payload integration.

Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies LLC (“BCT” or “Blue Canyon”), a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, delivered eight flight control moment gyroscopes (CMG) or CMG actuators and their associated fully redundant control electronics to an undisclosed customer. 

“BCT has leveraged its deep technical knowledge of reaction wheels and ultra-low disturbance motors to develop high-precision CMGs with increased agility at a lower power compared to traditional reaction wheels,” said Matt Carton, Component Development Executive Director. “This increase in performance provides improved spacecraft agility that has applications for a wide range of customer missions.”

Each CMG outputs over 12.5Nm of torque, which is 50x the 0.25Nm capability of BCT’s current RW8 and RW4 reaction wheels. This max torque is achieved by each CMG using about half the power compared to the RW4 wheel. A CMG with over 8Nm of torque is in development at BCT, which will become a standard offering in Saturn ESPA Grande-class Microsats. The actuator can double and even quadruple the utility of spacecraft, providing a significant return on investment. 

In conjunction with these flight deliveries, BCT has also accumulated over 2.5 million gimbal cycles through an accelerated life test designed to simulate each CMG’s on-orbit operation. Achieving this level of cycling on top of the rigorous qualification test campaign validates the robustness of the rotor/gimbal bearing, rotor/gimbal motor, slip ring design, and custom isolation system design. 

About Blue Canyon Technologies

Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, offers a diverse portfolio of innovative, reliable and affordable spacecraft that enable a broad range of missions and technological advancements for the new space economy, reducing the barriers of space entry. BCT is currently supporting nearly 50 unique missions with over 90 spacecraft, all in production at their newly developed 80,000-square-foot facility in Lafayette, 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 2020 Best in Biz Award and the 2020 Tibbetts Award.

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com. You can follow the company on Instagram here or Twitter here. 

About Raytheon Intelligence & Space
Raytheon Intelligence & Space delivers the disruptive technologies our customers need to succeed in any domain, against any challenge. A developer of advanced sensors, and cyber and software solutions, Raytheon Intelligence & Space provides a decisive advantage to civil, military and commercial customers in more than 46 countries around the world. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, the business generated $15 billion in adjusted pro forma annual revenue in 2020 and has 37,000 employees worldwide. Raytheon Intelligence & Space is one of four businesses that form Raytheon Technologies Corporation.

Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies LLC (“BCT” or “Blue Canyon”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, today announced the launch of eight avionics systems aboard Artemis 1 on Nov. 16, 2022. 

Artemis 1 is the first test flight of NASA’s new Space Launch System (“SLS”) rocket to send an uncrewed Orion capsule to lunar orbit. Orion is spending approximately six weeks in space before returning to Earth on Dec. 28. In addition to the Orion spacecraft, the SLS rocket is carrying 10 CubeSats that will deploy to perform their own technology demonstrations and scientific investigations for numerous missions. 

Of the ten CubeSats aboard, Blue Canyon provided eight avionics systems, including its XACT-15, XACT-50, and XB1 Avionics. The company’s components are equipped with a powerful processing core that enables CubeSats to point with the highest accuracy. The hardware was delivered five years ago for numerous customer payloads, including multiple foreign customers. 

“The Artemis 1 CubeSats all have unique needs, and BCT is proud to be able to support these missions with common designs and solutions.” said Matt Pallas, Executive Director of Component Programs at Blue Canyon Technologies. “We’re looking forward to supporting our NASA, domestic, and international customers as they expand the frontiers of small satellite technology.”   

Blue Canyon is providing additional spacecraft buses and components for another upcoming historic launch, CIRCE, scheduled for late 2022. Teaming with U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and U.K. Defense Science Technology Laboratory, Blue Canyon will provide twin 6U CubeSats that will fly in a circular orbit to measure Earth’s ionosphere and particle radiation environment. CIRCE, Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment, will be the first U.K. satellite to launch from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay on Virgin Orbit.  

Work on the avionics systems aboard Artemis 1 was completed at Blue Canyon Technologies facilities in Boulder, Colorado.

Raytheon Technologies’ majority-owned joint venture RGNext provided launch and range services for the mission at its eastern range location.

About Blue Canyon Technologies 

Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), a 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 over 100 cumulative spacecraft orders.  Microsatellites are manufactured at the 80,000 sq-ft Lafayette facility and CubeSats and components are manufactured in 40,000 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.

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com. You can follow the company on LinkedIn here, Instagram here, or Twitter here. 

About Raytheon Intelligence & Space

Raytheon Intelligence & Space, a Raytheon Technologies business, delivers the disruptive technologies our customers need to succeed in any domain, against any challenge. A developer of advanced sensors, cyber services and software solutions, Raytheon Intelligence & Space provides a decisive advantage to civil, military and commercial customers around the world. For more information, visit www.raytheonintelligenceandspace.com.

Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, announced today that its ESPA Grande Saturn spacecraft bus will be a part of the maiden QS-1 mission of Quantum Space in October 2024.

QS-1 will fly in cislunar space primarily around the two Earth-Moon-Lagrange Points 1 and 2, or EM-L1 and EM-L2, to establish commercial operations for Quantum. Key mission objectives will include producing space domain awareness data products, hosting customer payloads, advanced cislunar navigation methods and autonomous station keeping. The mission will leverage commercial ground station networks for space-to-ground communication. Mission and payload control will be conducted from a Quantum control center.

“Our Saturn product, with key enhancements for deep space, will provide Quantum Space with an architecture that has been designed specifically for these types of missions – a quiet, stable, agile platform to optimize use of the Quantum suite of instruments,” said Jeff Schrader, president, Blue Canyon Technologies.

In addition to BCT’s Saturn product being on the QS-1 mission, the company will also carry Quantum customer payloads to cislunar space.

Blue Canyon Technologies has demonstrated its robust production line with recently deliveries of multiple Saturn-class buses with more bus deliveries to follow by end of the year. These deliveries are a result of a successful, repeatable integration and environmental test campaign at BCT’s facilities.

The Saturn-class buses include advanced propulsion, a robust power system, command and data handling, radio frequency communications and dedicated payload interfaces capable of hosting a variety of payload phenomenologies at in the LEO, GEO, cislunar and deep space orbital regimes. 

The Saturn-class bus product line will continue to provide high-performance, versatile platforms for commercial, civil, and DOD customers on a rapid cadence. 

ABOUT BLUE CANYON TECHNOLOGIES 

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 over 100 cumulative spacecraft orders.  Microsatellites are manufactured at the 80,000 sq-ft Lafayette facility and CubeSats and components are manufactured in 40,000 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.

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com. You can follow the company on LinkedIn here, Instagram here, or Twitter here.

ABOUT RAYTHEON INTELLIGENCE & SPACE

Raytheon Intelligence & Space, a Raytheon Technologies business, delivers the disruptive technologies our customers need to succeed in any domain, against any challenge. A developer of advanced sensors, cyber services and software solutions, Raytheon Intelligence & Space provides a decisive advantage to civil, military and commercial customers around the world.

For more information, visit www.raytheonintelligenceandspace.com.

CubeSat Factory can produce 85 CubeSats a year

LAFAYETTE, Colo., Aug. 4, 2022 – Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies LLC (“BCT” or “Blue Canyon”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, celebrated the grand opening of its 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, a year. Currently, the company has 38 CubeSats in various stages of design, assembly and test.

“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.”

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 Low-Earth Orbit. The company looks forward to providing its largest constellation delivery with 18 integrated CubeSats for a commercial customer and several NASA launches, including the uncrewed Artemis 1 moon rocket scheduled for Aug. 29 and Starling at the end of 2022.

Since 2020, Raytheon Technologies has invested more than $1 billion in small satellites, 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.

About Blue Canyon Technologies

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 over 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.

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com. You can follow the company on LinkedIn here, Instagram here, or Twitter here.

About Raytheon Intelligence & Space

Raytheon Intelligence & Space, a Raytheon Technologies business, delivers the disruptive technologies our customers need to succeed in any domain, against any challenge. A developer of advanced sensors, cyber services and software solutions, Raytheon Intelligence & Space provides a decisive advantage to civil, military and commercial customers around the world. For more information, visit www.raytheonintelligenceandspace.com.