Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT) will support the development of Made In Space’s spacecraft platform for the upcoming Archinaut One Mission, BCT announced on Thursday.
“The implications of our ability to conduct 3D printing in space are endless and we’re proud to partner with Made In Space to make this mission a reality,” said George Stafford, founder and CEO of Blue Canyon Technologies.
BCT will provide robotic manufacturing and assembly to demonstrate how companies can utilize and enable entirely new structures in orbit. The objective of the Archinaut One mission is to construct two ten-meter solar arrays on orbit to power an ESPA-class satellite.
Once on orbit, Archinaut One will display the extended structure additive manufacturing capabilities and advanced robotics to manufacture and assemble the satellite’s power system. The Archinaut-created solar arrays will yield nearly 5 times the power currently available to ESPA-class satellites.
“More and more we’re finding that our spacecraft bus capabilities are enabling increasingly innovative technologies, changing the new space frontier and how we can leverage it,” added Stafford.
In addition to BCT’s support of the space mission, the company has also provided services to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Nov. 2019. Under the agreement, BCT will provide a pair of nanosatellites for NRL's joint mission with the U.K. ministry of defense to study the ionosphere and radiation environment in space from different vantage points.
BCT stated that it will equip each six-unit CubeSat with two ultraviolet photometers from NRL to gauge ionospheric structure and airglow from low-Earth orbit as part of the Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment.
"Since space weather affects satellite communications and radar, a thorough understanding of the environment is essential to commonly used satellite infrastructure like GPS and communications systems," said Matt Pallas, manager of the CIRCE program at BCT.
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.
