Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), now a part of RTX, is a vertically-integrated spacecraft manufacturer specializing in small satellites and spacecraft systems. They provide turnkey solutions, CubeSats, microsats, components, and subsystems like attitude determination and control systems (ADCS). BCT supports various missions for customers like the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and is known for its cost-efficient, high-performance solutions. Key products include spacecraft buses, star trackers, and reaction wheels.
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The Blue Canyon-built bus housing ispace-U.S.’s communications payload will serve as the data relay between Earth and the far side of the Moon to enable rapid data transmission from the lander and its payloads.
Blue Canyon Technologies’ spacecraft platforms are designed to provide CMG-based solutions optimized for increased performance, low cost, high reliability, and high-volume production.
Blue Canyon Technologies has 200 star trackers launched to date.
Blue Canyon Technologies has more than 800 reaction wheels launched to date.
Blue Canyon Technologies has nearly 300 sun sensors launched to date.
Blue Canyon Technologies offers the CMG-12 with 12 Nms rotor momentum and 12 Nm of output torque.
Blue Canyon Technologies offers the CMG-8 with 8 Nms rotor momentum and 8 Nm of output torque.
Blue Canyon Technologies has delivered multiple sets of flight control moment gyroscopes designed at a SWaP-C appropriate level for the smallsat market.
Blue Canyon Technologies’ components and bus platforms have completed missions in Very-Low Earth Orbit, Low Earth Orbit, Geostationary Earth Orbit, cislunar space, and on an interplanetary journey.
Blue Canyon Technologies has launched 70 spacecraft since its inception.
ispace will use 1,800,000,000 JPY to cover part of the cost of two relay satellites being built by Blue Canyon Technologies to handle communications between the farside lander and Earth.
Blue Canyon Technologies is building Oracle-M under a $14,600,000 contract awarded in November 2021.
The Blackjack program provided on-orbit flight heritage for Blue Canyon’s Saturn buses.
XB3 from Blue Canyon Technologies has a design life of 5 years for LEO missions and 2 years for GEO missions.
XB3 from Blue Canyon Technologies requires payload power of 3.3 V or 5.0 V and provides an available payload volume of 8U.
XB3 from Blue Canyon Technologies supports an uplink signal rate of 100 Kbps and a downlink signal rate of 2 Mbps on S-band.
The Standard NST from Blue Canyon Technologies requires a supply voltage of 5–28 V, consumes 1.5–3.5 W, has a mass of 0.35 kg, measures 10 x 5.5 x 0.05 m, supports RS-422 and RS-485 interfaces, and is suitable for LEO and GEO standalone missions or constellations.
The RWP015 from Blue Canyon Technologies has a maximum torque of 0.004 Nm, a momentum of 0.015 Nms, a mass of 0.13 kg, and requires a DC supply of 10-14 V with power consumption of less than 1 W.
Blue Canyon Technologies supplied cubesats for NASA’s CLICK B/C mission, projected to launch in 2024, to demonstrate optical communication crosslink between two small spacecraft in low Earth orbit.
Blue Canyon Technologies won a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract in 2018 to supply buses for the Blackjack technology demonstration in low Earth orbit.