06 Focus Area In development
Conventional smallsat structures wait on tooling. Ours do not. By additively manufacturing the primary structure and bus components, a design change can be printed, integrated, and back on the bench in the time a machined part spends in a queue. That matters most where it usually hurts most: keeping a constellation current instead of frozen at the date it was ordered.
01 Approach
Printing a satellite is not the point. Collapsing the distance between a design change and a flight article is the point. Everything below follows from that.
A structural revision goes from CAD to a physical article without a tooling cycle. Over a constellation program that compounds: the fifth batch can carry lessons the first batch taught, instead of repeating a design frozen years earlier.
Integrated harness runs, conformal radiators, and lattice structures that put mass only where load actually goes. Fewer fasteners and fewer joints means fewer of the interfaces that fail on vibration.
When a bus is cheap enough to lose, a constellation can fly newer technology sooner and accept a shorter design life. That is a different economic model from a single exquisite spacecraft, and it needs different manufacturing.
Printing in house removes a tier of vendors from the critical path and from the threat surface. We treat the design files and the print process as things worth protecting, because they are.
02 Configurations
Design targets for the current development articles. These are engineering goals under active test, not flight-qualified specifications, and we will tell you exactly where each one stands on a program call.
| Configuration | Form factor | Payload volume target | Typical role |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND-1 | 1U | Single small sensor or radio | Technology demonstration, on-orbit component test |
| ND-3 | 3U | Optical or RF payload with deployables | RF survey, AIS and signal collection |
| ND-6 | 6U | Imaging optic with onboard processing | Earth observation, tasked revisit imaging |
| ND-12 | 12U | Multi-sensor or hosted payload bay | Multi-payload missions, hosted customer sensors |
Additively manufactured primary structure with printed bus components and standard rail interfaces for common deployers.
Earth observation optics and RF sensing packages, with a hosted payload option on the larger buses.
Tasking, downlink handling, and processing built by our software team on the same evidence store as the toolkit.
Command authentication, signed firmware, and supply chain review treated as requirements from the first print.
03 Principles
The same three commitments govern our maritime and aerial programs.
Short build cycles keep the fleet current instead of frozen at the date it was ordered.
These are collection assets. What they gather lands in the same command view that runs our cyber work.
Firmware, command links, and supply chain are treated as attack surface from the first print.
Program status The satellite program is in active development. We are talking with agencies, integrators, launch brokers, and manufacturing partners about pilot programs, hosted payloads, and constellation requirements. If you have a payload looking for a bus, that is a conversation we want.
Talk to the Program Team→ Next Step
Tell us the orbit, the sensor, and the timeline. We will be straight with you about where the program is and what it can commit to.
