Word of mouth (8/14/23)

Good morning. We’re firmly in Q2 earnings season, with a slew of results coming out this afternoon. Be sure to check in a little later this week for our top level highlights.

Today’s newsletter:
✈️ Collins comms
🏠 York’s new digs
🗓️ The week ahead

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Collins to Build Aircraft Comms Pods

Collins Aerospace nabbed a $36M Air Force Research Laboratory contract last week to develop a comms terminal to feed military and commercial satellite data directly to cockpits.

"This resilient communications terminal is designed for survivability in degraded environments to offer military leaders enhanced situational awareness to make better decisions, faster across the battlespace" Collins VP Ryan Bunge said.

The details: The platform-agnostic aircraft satcom pod is designed to provide reliable and high-speed beyond-the-line-of-sight satellite comms to troops regardless of where they are in the world. The terminal will be able to sync with a wide variety of current and future satellites in any orbit.

• "It is critical in a contested environment that the warfighter can communicate with operators regardless of communication path," Bunge said.

Pentagon 🤝 commercial satcom: The contract is part of a broader military push to improve cockpit comms—particularly in challenging and remote environments—by relying on commercial satellite constellations. In 2017, the Air Force established the Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program to explore and execute the private-public collaboration.

L3Harris and Northrop Grumman have also won sizable contracts this year in support of the program.

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York Opens a New Facility in Denver

York Space Systems is expanding. This morning, the Denver, CO-based satellite manufacturer announced that it will open the doors to a fourth production facility, dubbed Potomac, and start cranking out buses by Q4.

“Our new Potomac facility represents a significant milestone in York’s growth trajectory, driven by steadily increasing demand from new and existing customers,” CEO Dirk Wallinger said in a release.

Bucking bespoke: York’s philosophy for building satellites revolves around a standard bus that can be outfitted with whatever payloads a customer requires, rather than designing a tailored bus for each mission. The result: the ability to mass-produce buses for a lower price.

The company has won major manufacturing deals with a variety of government and commercial customers, including a pair of contracts worth $582M combined to build satellites for Tranche 1 of the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) national security architecture. AE Industrial acquired a majority stake of York last year in a deal that valued the company at ~$1.13B.

The new digs: York is investing $20M in the new 60,000 sq ft facility it says will boost its overall manufacturing capacity to 1,000 satellite buses per year.

• York noted that the additional capacity isn’t necessary to meet its current backlog of commercial and government contracts.

On top of the manufacturing capabilities, the new spot will also increase York’s testing capacity and inventory infrastructure.

In Other News

• Luna-25 has switched on its science instruments. The Russian lander is two days out from entering lunar orbit.

• China launched a remote sensing satellite aboard a Long March 3B.

• India performed a series of parachute deployment tests in preparation for a future crewed landing back on Earth.

The View from Space