Blue Canyon Technologies Selected for MIT Lincoln Laboratory Agile MicroSatellite Mission

October 11, 2019

BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) today announced its role in supporting MIT Lincoln Laboratory’s Agile MicroSatellite (AMS) mission. BCT will design, manufacture and operate a 6U CubeSat the mission, which will be critical in demonstrating the potential low-altitude performance of CubeSats. Funded by the U.S. Air Force, launch is planned for late 2021.

CubeSats are smaller, quicker to build and launch, and far less expensive than conventional satellites. This first-of-its-kind mission will demonstrate that a CubeSat can reliably operate in very low earth orbit. AMS will initially launch to an altitude of 500 kilometers and will use electric propulsion to maneuver to the lowest altitude possible. By demonstrating CubeSat performance at such low altitudes, the U.S. Air Force, and others will be able to leverage the technology to conduct important new Earth observation and other civil and military space missions.

“Blue Canyon Technologies is a valuable partner to MIT as we continue to find new, efficient and reliable ways to develop and test solutions to ensure the United States is leading the globe in space research and aerospace technology,” said Andrew Stimac, Principal Investigator at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

“CubeSats will continue to play a crucial part in refining the framework for conducting rapid space experiments, and we’re proud to partner with MIT Lincoln Lab on this mission,” said George Stafford, founder and CEO of Blue Canyon Technologies. “With this mission, we can continue to demonstrate the viability of small satellites in a low-Earth orbit, further highlighting the potential of CubeSats as a versatile next-generation technology, suitable for a broad range of applications.”

MIT Lincoln Laboratory conducts research and technology development of advanced satellite systems that are used to monitor the activity of objects in space and to perform Earth remote sensing. This mission supports the organization’s goal to rapidly develop and field-test innovative systems used by the U.S. Air Force, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, NASA, and other U.S. government agencies to gather data for the persistent surveillance of wide areas in space and on the earth.

BCT is currently building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic missions. The company has doubled in size over the past 12 months and plans to open its new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

About BCT

Blue Canyon Technologies, Inc., (BCT) a Colorado-based private company founded in 2008 to bring innovative, reliable and affordable solutions to space missions, is an experienced integrator of aerospace systems and developer of advanced aerospace products and technologies. BCT is a vertically integrated spacecraft manufacturer supporting nearly 40 unique missions with over 70 spacecraft. The company currently has more than 60 satellites in production and is developing a new 80,000-square-foot facility for high rate production.

BCT has supported missions for The U.S. Air Force, NASA, The Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA) and many others and provided the Attitude Control Systems for the first interplanetary CubeSats which successfully traveled to Mars. The company has been recognized with awards including Inc Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies, 2017 Colorado Companies to Watch, and the 2019 Colorado Biz Made in Colorado Emerging Manufacturer Winner.

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.

Blue Canyon Technologies Completes Performance Design Review for DARPA Blackjack Program

October 02, 2019 08:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–In collaboration with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the US Air Force (USAF), small spacecraft manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) has completed the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) for the Blackjack program. BCT is designing an ESPA-class microsat for Blackjack, incorporating their state-of-the-art commoditized FleXbus spacecraft architecture.

The PDR took place on July 29th at BCT’s Boulder-Colorado manufacturing facility and demonstrated the spacecraft bus design meets mission requirements. The PDR culminates the first phase of the program. An extension is currently being negotiated to include a supplemental design review to occur in a matter of months.

BCT is the first company on contract with DARPA to complete a PDR for the Blackjack program. The manufacturer will submit a bid for Blackjack Phase 2 once DARPA finalizes requirements.

“The successful PDR represents a culmination of an intensive 10 months of engineering design effort within Blue Canyon and with external partners who will be vital to meeting Blackjack mission requirements” said Bill Schum, Blackjack Program Manager at Blue Canyon Technologies.

With funding from DARPA and the USAF, the Blackjack program aims to develop and demonstrate the critical technical elements of a global high-speed network platform in low Earth orbit (LEO) that enables highly networked, resilient, and persistent Department of Defense (DoD) payloads.

Blue Canyon’s diverse spacecraft platform has the proven capability to enable a broad range of missions and technological advances for the New Space economy, further reducing the barriers of space entry. The X-SAT microsat spacecraft uses BCT’s heritage FleXbus avionics to provide an advanced platform that maximizes payload volume. The spacecraft includes ultra-high-performance pointing accuracy, a robust power system, command and data handling, RF communications, and dedicated payload interfaces.

BCT is currently building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic missions. The company has doubled in size over the past 12 months and plans to open its new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

About BCT

Blue Canyon Technologies, Inc., (BCT) a Colorado-based private company founded in 2008 to bring innovative, reliable and affordable solutions to space missions, is an experienced integrator of aerospace systems and developer of advanced aerospace products and technologies. BCT is a vertically integrated spacecraft manufacturer supporting nearly 40 unique missions with over 70 spacecraft. The company currently has more than 60 satellites in production and is developing a new 80,000-square-foot facility for high rate production.

BCT has supported missions for The US Air Force, NASA, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and many others and provided the Attitude Control Systems for the first interplanetary CubeSats which successfully traveled to Mars. The company has been recognized with awards including Inc Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies, 2017 Colorado Companies to Watch, and the 2019 Colorado Biz Made in Colorado Emerging Manufacturer Winner.

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.

Inside the Colorado company that builds satellites you can hold in your hands

Posted: 3:08 PM, Sep 04, 2019 Updated: 10:38 AM, Sep 05, 2019

By: Ryan Osborne with Denver Channel 7

BOULDER, Colo. – Inside Blue Canyon Technologies’ headquarters, Stephen Steg points to a wall where pictures of satellites are set against a background of Earth viewed from space.

There’s RAVAN and CYGNSS and ASTERIA and HALOSAT, each one an acronym for the science and technology packed into the small devices.

To Steg’s right, there is nothing but open space, room for the future.

“This wall just keeps going,” said Steg, Blue Canyon’s chief technical officer. “This is just getting started.”

The space industry, to many, might be the image of a team of astronauts strapped into a billion-dollar shuttle, hurtling beyond the atmosphere. At Blue Canyon, it’s an engineer tinkering on a satellite that you can hold in your hand.

When completed, the satellite, often no bigger than a briefcase or a backpack, will be launched with other small satellites to the International Space Station, where astronauts will deploy the device into orbit. As it hovers about 250 miles above Earth, the satellite may point left or right, up or down, all controlled by a team in a darkened conference room, the Mission Operations Center at Blue Canyon’s headquarters.

Where large spacecraft missions might take hundreds of millions of dollars and years to develop, a small-satellite project takes a fraction of the funding and a quicker timeframe to launch into space.

And the demand for such satellites and the data they can gather has only increased: This year, Blue Canyon is on track to double in size, increasing from around 100 employees to around 200. The company is based in Boulder, spread across three buildings near the city airport. Early next year, Blue Canyon is moving to a new headquarters in Lafayette.

Blue Canyon has 13 satellites on-orbit and about 80 devices under development, Steg said.

“There’s just been this pent-up demand to get more space missions going,” Steg said, “and we found a very cost-effective way of doing that.”

Steg, Blue Canyon CEO George Stafford and COO Matthew Beckner co-founded the company in 2008, when they began working with the Air Force to develop an attitude determination control system, or XACT. The technology allows for attitude adjustment, giving Blue Canyon to accurately control which direction their satellites are pointed.

Eleven years later, Blue Canyon works mostly with universities and government agencies, including NASA and the US Air Force, building satellites for research projects. The universities include CU Boulder, Colorado State and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Each satellite commissioned by a research team has a different mission, with different scientific instruments. Blue Canyon designs and manufactures the satellites and tests their durability for launch.

This past week, the company’s TEMPEST-D satellite, a 23-pound weather satellite developed with researchers at Colorado State University , peered inside Hurricane Dorian, showing where the rain was most intense inside the Category 5 storm.

The TEMPEST-D project was supported through an $8.2 million grant from NASA’s Earth Venture Technology Program. Colorado State researchers developed the science behind the mission – a microwave radiometer that enabled the peek inside the storm. Blue Canyon focused on building a device that could get the science into space.

The blueprint for the TEMPEST-D and other small satellites is known as a CubeSat, which was developed in 1999 at Stanford University and Cal Poly. One CubeSat unit is 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters. The TEMPEST-D, for example, takes six of those units and is known as a “6U” spacecraft.

The eventual goal of the project would be to build a constellation of the small satellites, giving scientists the ability to track a storm’s developments in real-time.

Steven Reising, the CSU professor leading the TEMPEST-D project, described the partnership with Blue Canyon as an example of “new space,” where researchers don’t need hundreds of millions of dollars in funding or an aerospace giant to find a way into space.

“It’s very exciting,” Steg said, “because there’s a lot of research scientists out there that are chasing very few large NASA programs. So by miniaturizing the satellites, they cost a lot less to launch, so the whole program costs are much smaller. We’ve enabled many more scientists to get their instruments up on orbit.”

Blue Canyon Technologies Makes Inc. 5000 List of America’s Most Successful Companies

Boulder-based small satellite manufacturer has ranked in the prestigious list for three years; Ranking comes at a time of high growth and hiring for the company

August 21, 2019

BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) today announced it has made the 2019 Inc. 5000: The Most Successful Companies in America list, an annual ranking of the 5,000 fastest-growing privately held companies in the U.S. Blue Canyon ranked in the top fifth, coming in at No. 894.

“We are at the forefront of navigating the new frontiers of space, and we are proud that Inc. has recognized our growth and contributions”

This is the third year BCT has earned a place in the rankings. Only one in approximately eight companies have ranked several times.

“We are at the forefront of navigating the new frontiers of space, and we are proud that Inc. has recognized our growth and contributions,” said George Stafford, CEO and president of Blue Canyon Technologies. “This prestigious ranking not only demonstrates our company’s success as a leader in the space industry, but also represents the opportunity we can offer to new, innovative talent as our company grows.”

The ranking comes at a period of high growth for the company. BCT is currently building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic missions. The company has doubled in size over the past 12 months and plans to open its new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

Unlike many competitors in the sector, BCT is employee-owned and offers hands-on and immersive opportunities. The company is currently working on highly visibly, high-impact missions to low earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, lunar orbit, and the first CubeSats to travel to another planet (MarCO). The MarCO mission just won the SmallSat Mission of the Year Award for 2019 From the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

BCT is hiring for several roles in the areas of engineering, mission operations, and manufacturing to accommodate growth. To learn more about career opportunity at Blue Canyon Technologies visit https://bluecanyontech.com/careers.

About BCT

Blue Canyon Technologies, Inc., (BCT) a Colorado-based private company founded in 2008 to bring innovative, reliable and affordable solutions to space missions, is an experienced integrator of aerospace systems and developer of advanced aerospace products and technologies. BCT is a vertically integrated spacecraft manufacturer supporting nearly 40 unique missions with over 70 spacecraft. The company currently has more than 60 satellites in production and is developing a new 80,000-square-foot facility for high rate production.

BCT has supported missions for The U.S. Air Force, NASA, The Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA) and many others and provided the Attitude Control Systems for the first interplanetary CubeSats which successfully traveled to Mars. The company has been recognized with awards including Inc Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies, 2017 Colorado Companies to Watch, and the 2019 Colorado Biz Made in Colorado Emerging Manufacturer Winner.

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com.

Viasat taps Blue Canyon Technologies to build Link 16 satellite

Originally published on Space News

by Debra Werner — August 19, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO – Viasat selected Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) to design and manufacture a cubesat for a U.S. Air Force test of a military communications terminal in low Earth orbit.

BCT announced plans Aug. 19 to build a 12-unit cubesat bus equipped with Viasat’s Link 16 terminal to launch in 2020. U.S. military and NATO allies rely on Link 16, an encrypted radio frequency, to relay information in a line-of-sight from aircraft, ships and ground vehicles. If Link 16 terminals work on small satellites, they could relay military communications beyond a vehicle’s line-of-sight.

“Blue Canyon Technologies is honored to participate in this important pilot project,” George Stafford, BCT CEO and president, said in a statement. “To date, Link 16 technology has only been capable of line-of-sight communications. By demonstrating that Link 16 can operate in a space environment on small satellites, the U.S. military can gain beyond-line-of-sight tactical advantages on the battlefield and ultimately keep our troops safer.”

In May, the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles directorate awarded Viasat a $10 million contract to test whether a Link 16 terminal on a small satellite could serve as a communications network relay, in a program called XVI. BCT declined to comment on the value of its Link 16 contract with Viasat.

“Viasat is thrilled to have Blue Canyon Technologies supporting the XVI program,” Ken Peterman, Viasat Government Systems president, said in a statement. “This Link 16-capable low Earth orbit spacecraft will address the Department of Defense’s urgent need for a fast-to-market, cost-effective, space-based Link 16 solution to maintain the technological edge needed in contested environments.”

BCT, a rapidly growing satellite manufacturer in Boulder, Colorado, is building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic customers. For the Link 16 mission, BCT will supply one of the firm’s XB1 spacecraft buses that comes equipped with subsystems including power, propulsion, flight control software, radio frequency communications, attitude control, and guidance, navigation and control.

BCT is currently building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic missions. The company has doubled in size over the past 12 months and plans to open its new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

It’s the size of a briefcase, but this Colorado satellite can see inside a hurricane

By: Ryan Osborne

Originally published on Denver 7 Channel

DENVER – August 14, 2019 The TEMPEST-D satellite is about the size of a briefcase, with a beige and gray exterior and two solar panels that extend from its aluminum sides as it floats through space. It looks something like an old computer tower, only with wings.

But it’s this small spacecraft, developed by researchers at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, that can peer inside a hurricane, giving researchers the possibility of a cheaper – and more frequent – way of watching how a storm develops.

“What surprised a lot of people was that such a small, low-cost satellite can produce such science-quality data, when compared with the other big weather satellites that have been observing the earth for more than 40 years,” said Steven Reising, a CSU professor and the lead investigator on the project.

Reising, co-investigator V. Chandra Chandrasekar and their team of Colorado State students worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California and Blue Canyon Technologies in Boulder to launch the satellite.

The TEMPEST-D (short for Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems – Demonstration) was sent into space in May 2018, and deployed into orbit from the International Space Station two months later.

The satellite’s main piece of technology, a miniaturized microwave radiometer, was turned on last September. Hours later, as it hovered about 250 miles above earth, it was sending back images from inside the storm bands of Hurricane Florence.

Where a space view of the storm showed the massive hurricane spinning toward the coast, the TEMPEST-D showed colors of blue, green, yellow, red and purple, indicating where the bands of rain were the most intense.

The TEMPEST-D data, on its own, wasn’t a breakthrough – satellites have seen inside the clouds of a hurricane, Reising explained. What made the project unique was how the data was gathered and what that held for the future.

The tiny TEMPEST-D was able to see how the storm developed, showing where rainfall weakened and strengthened. Larger satellites, which hover about 100 times higher than the TEMPEST-D, don’t produce images from inside the storm, Reising said. Other lower-orbiting satellites can see inside the storm but typically only pass over one area once per day.

The hope with the TEMPEST-D project, Reising said, is that because the satellite is cheaper to make and easier to launch, researchers can dispatch a chain of these small satellites into orbit and increase how often a storm’s development can be viewed. A fleet of small satellites like the TEMPEST-D could show how a storm develops over half an hour, taking samples every few minutes.

NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office is supporting the project through an $8.2 million grant . Larger weather satellite projects, Reising said, can cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

“With the small satellites, because they’re much cheaper and easier to launch, we can launch a whole fleet of them and they can see how the storm is developing in time,” Reising said. “The point is here that a small platform with a short time development. We developed it in two years and were able to then put it into space. It’s a more rapid infusion of technology.”

Before a chain of TEMPEST-D satellites can be launched into space, Reising and his team had to prove that just one could survive.

In 2015, the team began working with Blue Canyon Technologies, an aerospace company in Boulder that specializes in building small spacecraft.

Reising’s team focused on the science behind the mission – the microwave radiometer and what data the satellite would gather. Blue Canyon focused on building a device that could get the science into space, said Matt Pallas, the Blue Canyon systems engineer who led the TEMPEST-D development.

The model for the TEMPEST-D was CubeSat, a standard for small satellites that was developed at Stanford University in 1999. A CubeSat unit is 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters by 10 centimeters. The TEMPEST-D is known as a “6U” spacecraft, Pallas said.

The satellite was made mostly of aluminum, with carbon-fiber solar arrays, and weighs about 23 pounds.

“The thing we like to talk about here is we’re lowering the barrier of entry of getting into space,” Pallas said. “In the past, you’re starting with $100 million and that might just be the spacecraft. We are producing data that is complementary or on par [at a lower cost].”

The initial goal for the project was to see the TEMPEST-D survive 90 days in space, but Blue Canyon built the device with the idea that it would stay there for at least three years. Still, more than a year later, the results have left the researchers impressed.

“One of the things that made me most excited was the ability to do such great science in such a small package, for so cheap,” Pallas said. “To see the capability that we could put into this package, it made me just excited for the future.”


Blue Canyon Technologies Builds Key Hardware for Four Consecutive AIAA/USU Small Satellite of the Year Award Winners

BOULDER, Colo., August 13, 2019 — For the past four years, small satellite manufacturer provider Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) has provided critical hardware for each of the AIAA/USU Small Satellite of the Year Award winners. The award is presented each summer at the AIAA Small Satellite Conference in Logan, Utah.

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Technical Committee awarded the 2019 title to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) MarCO mission. MarCO is the first interplanetary CubeSat mission, having successfully traveled through deep space to Mars. BCT provided its state-of-the-art XACT Attitude Control System for both MarCO-A and MarCO-B, two briefcase-sized satellites that accompanied the Insight lander and provided near-real-time telemetry as the rover pierced the atmosphere of the Red Planet.

The Small Satellite of the Year Awards are presented annually to a mission that has demonstrated a significant improvement in the capability of small satellites. Eligible missions must have individual satellite wet mass of less than 150 kg, and must have launched, established communication, and have acquired results from on-orbit after January 1 of the previous year.

Previous award-winning missions Blue Canyon Technologies has supported also include:

  • The JPL-led ASTERIA mission (2018): BCT provided the XACT ADCS component for the Arcsecond Space Telescope Enabling Research in Astrophysics (ASTERIA) mission. The primary objective of the mission was to demonstrate that its small payload could look for exoplanets that transit their parent star, via precision observation. Deployed from the International Space Station, ASTERIA is the first CubeSat to achieve sub-arcsecond pointing accuracy. The highly integrated XACT enabled the groundbreaking pointing accuracy, with a native stability of 1.6 arcseconds. Data from the payload showed the pointing stability could be achieved by the XACT alone.
  • NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) (2017): CYGNSS is a constellation of 8 microsatellites, manufactured and operated by the University of Michigan and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI). The low-Earth orbit satellites make frequent measurements of ocean surface winds to monitor the location, size, intensity and development of tropical cyclones, mostly looking for how they intensify. BCT provided 24 high-performance RWp015 Reaction Wheels and 8 Star Trackers for the mission constellation.
  • MinXSS-1 (2016): BCT manufactured its first XACT Attitude Control System for the University of Colorado (LASP) MinXSS-1 mission. On orbit for 354 days, MinXSS-1 collected soft X-ray emissions from the sun to measure their intensity.

BCT is currently building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic customers, supporting LEO, GEO, Lunar and interplanetary missions. The company has doubled in size over the past 12 months and plans to open its new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

About BCT

Blue Canyon Technologies, Inc., (BCT) a Colorado-based private company founded in 2008 to bring innovative, reliable and affordable solutions to space missions, is an experienced integrator of aerospace systems and developer of advanced aerospace products and technologies. BCT is a vertically integrated spacecraft manufacturer supporting nearly 40 unique missions with over 70 spacecraft. The company currently has more than 60 satellites in production and is developing a new 80,000-square-foot facility for high rate production.

BCT has supported missions for The U.S. Air Force, NASA, The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and many others and provided the Attitude Control Systems for the first interplanetary CubeSats which successfully traveled to Mars. The company has been recognized with awards including Inc Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies, 2017 Colorado Companies to Watch, and the 2019 Colorado Biz Made in Colorado Emerging Manufacturer Winner.

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com.

Blue Canyon Technologies continues NASA CubeSat operations

Originally published on Space News

by Debra Werner — August 5, 2019

LOGAN, Utah — Small satellite manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) announced plans Aug. 5 to continue operating two NASA-funded CubeSats, TEMPEST-D and HaloSat, from its mission operations center in Boulder, Colorado.

Both TEMPEST-D, short for Temporal Experiment for Storms and Tropical Systems – Demonstration, and HaloSat, an investigation of the Milky Way’s galactic halo, were launched from the International Space Station in July 2018. A year later, both six-unit cubesats built by BCT are working well, said BCT CEO George Stafford.

The contract extensions reflect the performance of BCT hardware and the firm’s “ability to operate missions and deliver mission data to our customers,” Stafford said by email. “The complete turn-key and affordable solutions from BCT enable these missions to continue way beyond their intended mission life.”

BCT is building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic customers. Increasingly, the company also operates satellites for customers. BCT currently operates five satellite missions and plans to begin 12 more in 2020, Stafford said.

The TEMPEST-D satellite makes global measurements of water vapor, clouds and precipitation using a five-channel millimeter-wave radiometer. The cubesat developed by Colorado State University, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology and BCT. NASA’s Earth Ventures program is sponsoring the mission.

Under the contract extensions, BCT will continue to operate TEMPEST-D for four months and HaloSat for five months, Stafford said. BCT officials declined to comment on the value of the awards.

HaloSat, a mission developed by the University of Iowa, is the first cubesat funded by NASA’s Astrophysics Division. HaloSat relies on X-ray detectors to observe hot baryon gas in the Milky Way.

“It’s been a pleasure working with the talented team from BCT on the construction and operations of HaloSat,” said Philip Kaaret, HaloSat principal investigator and a professor in the University of Iowa’s Physics and Astronomy Department.

BCT is expanding rapidly. The firm, which has doubled its staff in the past year, plans to open a new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

Blue Canyon Technologies Providing CubeSats in Support of Two NASA Ames/MIT CLICK Flight Demonstration Missions

BOULDER, Colo., July 10, 2019 — Small satellite manufacturer Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) announced it has been selected by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s Small Spacecraft Technology program and NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, in collaboration with the University of Florida and MIT, to provide multiple 3U spacecraft for its CubeSat Lasercom Infrared Crosslink (CLICK) flight demonstration missions.  The CubeSats will be used for separate demonstration missions; the first being a laser space-to-ground demonstration mission and the second will demonstrate laser crosslinks and ranging in low-Earth orbit.

“BCT has a unique advantage as a spacecraft bus provider as it is equipped to support high-rate body-pointed lasercom capabilities with our flight-proven precision stability and pointing.” said George Stafford, CEO and President of Blue Canyon Technologies.

The new communication capabilities demonstrated by CLICK will enable new classes of small satellite missions like swarms for remote sensing or global constellations for communications.

“Demonstrating precision timing and ranging over a lasercom crosslink using BCT CubeSat platforms will enable new capabilities for coordinated and distributed sensing missions.” said Kerri Cahoy, associate professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT.

The 3U spacecraft uses BCT’s heritage XB1 avionics to provide a state-of-the-art CubeSat platform that maximizes payload volume.  The spacecraft includes ultra-high-performance pointing accuracy, a robust power system, command and data handling, RF communications, and dedicated payload interfaces. The spacecraft bus will be developed and tested at BCT’s Spacecraft Manufacturing Center in Colorado.

BCT is currently building more than 60 spacecraft for government, commercial and academic missions. The company has doubled in size over the past 12 months and plans to open its new 80,000-square-foot headquarters and production facility in 2020.

About BCT

Blue Canyon Technologies, Inc., (BCT) a Colorado-based private company founded in 2008 to bring innovative, reliable and affordable solutions to space missions, is an experienced integrator of aerospace systems and developer of advanced aerospace products and technologies. BCT is a vertically integrated spacecraft manufacturer supporting nearly 40 unique missions with over 70 spacecraft. The company currently has more than 50 satellites in production and is developing a new 80,000-square-foot facility for high rate production.

BCT has supported missions for The U.S. Air Force, NASA, The Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA) and many others and provided the Attitude Control Systems for the first interplanetary CubeSats which successfully traveled to Mars. The company has been recognized with awards including Inc Magazine’s 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies, 2017 Colorado Companies to Watch, and the 2019 Colorado Biz Made in Colorado Emerging Manufacturer Winner.

For the latest news on Blue Canyon Technologies and for other company information, please visit www.bluecanyontech.com.

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