Blue Canyon Technologies unveils expanded small satellite manufacturing factory – The Denver Gazette
Blue Canyon Technologies cubist test engineer Matthew Barrett works on a Blue Canyon Technologies avionics unit in the Infinity Lab at the company’s new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
CubeSats executive director John Carvo, left, shows some of the small satellites that they work on at the beginning of a tour of Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
CubeSats executive director John Carvo, center-left, and Blue Canyon Technologies general manager Jeff Watts cut the ribbon before giving tours of Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Blue Canyon Technologies technical test lead Gavin Montgomery works in the Infinity Lab of the company’s new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
A small satellite, commonly known as a cubesat, sits without it’s eventual payload on a bench in the Infinity Lab at Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
CubeSats Executive Director John Carvo shows some of the small satellites that they work on at the beginning of a tour of Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Blue Canyon Technologies General Manager Jeff Watts gives a brief speech before cutting the ribbon to unveil Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility, as seen on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Business Reporter
Blue Canyon Technologies cubist test engineer Matthew Barrett works on a Blue Canyon Technologies avionics unit in the Infinity Lab at the company’s new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
CubeSats executive director John Carvo, left, shows some of the small satellites that they work on at the beginning of a tour of Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
CubeSats executive director John Carvo, center-left, and Blue Canyon Technologies general manager Jeff Watts cut the ribbon before giving tours of Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Blue Canyon Technologies technical test lead Gavin Montgomery works in the Infinity Lab of the company’s new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
A small satellite, commonly known as a cubesat, sits without it’s eventual payload on a bench in the Infinity Lab at Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
CubeSats Executive Director John Carvo shows some of the small satellites that they work on at the beginning of a tour of Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Blue Canyon Technologies General Manager Jeff Watts gives a brief speech before cutting the ribbon to unveil Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Blue Canyon Technologies’ new cubesat manufacturing facility, as seen on Wednesday, August 3, 2022, in Boulder, Colo.(Timothy Hurst/The Denver Gazette)
Lafayette-based aerospace company Blue Canyon Technologies on Wednesday unveiled its recently expanded “cubesat” factory in Boulder, which will eventually allow for the production of up to 85 small satellites per year.
Blue Canyon, a Raytheon Intelligence & Space (NYSE: RTX) subsidiary, doubled the manufacturing space at the Boulder factory, off Airport Road, to 31,000 square feet.
“This factory essentially allows us to consolidate our engineering and production operations for cubesats to meet the needs of our customers producing large constellations and doing it with increased operational efficiency above what we have been able to do,” said General Manager Jeff Watts.
The company produces “microsats” at its 80,000-square-foot Lafayette facility, which is also its headquarters and missions operations location.
The microsats are small satellites, from 22 to 200 pounds. The cubesats are satellites made up of cubic modules about 40 inches wide, weighing no more than 3 pounds — about the size of a loaf of bread. Blue Canyon’s Star Tracker is a camera that allows the satellite to know exactly where it is by looking to surrounding stars.
“Currently, we can support with the factory up to 50 cubesats per year. Improvements in efficiency gains will up that to about 85 cubesats per year,” said Cubesats Executive Director John Carvo.
Last month, company officials witnessed the launch of Slingshot 1, MISR-B and a government customer satellite, aboard Virgin Orbit.
Slingshot 1 is the “first-ever Blue Canyon 12U CubeSat bus carrying 19 payloads to low Earth orbit,” according to a news release. It was built for Aerospace Corporation and the mission is expected to demonstrate the accessibility of integrating numerous payloads into a single interface.
MISR-B is a 6U CubeSat bus, “which Blue Canyon provided along with the radio, GPS, reaction wheels, torque rods, sun sensors, solar arrays, batteries, Guidance Navigation & Control System and power management.” The program is intended to demonstrate “a robust, responsive, multi-mission CubeSat capability to satisfy a varied set of requirements and provides significantly more power to the payload.”
The cubesats can perform missions like studying hurricanes from low-Earth orbit, Carvo said. The company has 35 cubesats in orbit.
Blue Canyon has grown to 450 employees, with about 140 who were hired in the last seven months, Carvo said.
It was bought by Massachusetts-based Raytheon Technologies Corp. in 2020. Raytheon also bought Centennial-based SEAKR Engineering LLC, a space electronics provider, in 2021.
Watts said the “ecosystem” of Raytheon, Blue Canyon and SEAKR in Colorado will allow for “larger constellations of small satellites, provided on a tighter timeline, and allows us to provide all the needed mission requirements.”
NASA recently awarded two aerospace companies with a large Colorado presence work on weather satellites that “will ultimately help save lives …
Business Reporter
Dennis Huspeni is a 30-year newspaper journalist who covers metro Denver business.