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 a year. Blue Canyon’s CubeSat performance is industry leading with sub-arcsecond pointing accuracy and optimization for payload size, weight and power. 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 is looking 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.
