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Loft Orbital’s business model entails buying satellite buses from spacecraft vendors and outfitting them with a mix of customer-provided payloads for a fee on Loft Orbital–owned-and-operated satellites.
Loft Orbital established a partner network in 2018 that includes satellite manufacturers LeoStella, Maxar Technologies, OHB/LuxSpace, Satrec Initiative, and Blue Canyon Technologies, along with partners in launch, ground communications, and analytics.
Loft Orbital’s first satellite, YAM-2, is scheduled to launch by mid-2020 on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle arranged through Spaceflight.
Loft Orbital raised $13,000,000 to continue development of a constellation of small satellites purpose-built to carry a mix of customer payloads.
YAM-2, YAM-3, and YAM-4 will be built on individually ordered satellite buses, and Loft Orbital plans to place a batch order by April for 10 to 20 satellite platforms from a single vendor.
Loft Orbital has not selected a bus vendor for the YAM-3 mission launching in 2020 and the YAM-4 mission launching in 2021 but expects to announce its vendor choice by the end of 2019.
As of 2019-11-13, Loft Orbital’s total raised reached $20,000,000 in equity and non-dilutive capital.
Loft Orbital will build two 8-kilogram payloads for Eutelsat and fly them on two 80-kilogram multi-customer condosats that Loft Orbital plans to launch in 2020.
The first of Loft Orbital’s condosats for Eutelsat, YAM-2, is slated to launch on India’s PSLV rocket between 2019-02-01 and 2019-04-30.
Eutelsat said the AAC Clyde Space satellites and Loft Orbital hosted payloads will cost the company no more than 1,000,000 EUR each.
Delta 4 Heavy uses three liquid-propellant rocket boosters on its first stage to loft 14,200 kg to geostationary transfer orbit.
SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy can loft 26,700 kg to geostationary transfer orbit using three liquid-fueled rocket cores.
OneWeb agreed in 2015 to pay Virgin Orbit $234 million, or $6,000,000 per launch, to loft its satellites one or two at a time using Virgin Orbit’s air-launched LauncherOne vehicle.
Launcher plans to develop Rocket-1 to loft 773 kg to a 200-kilometer orbit with test flights starting in 2024.
Loft Orbital does not build satellites but is developing a payload hub to serve as a universal adapter to fit customer payloads inside different spacecraft buses.
Loft Orbital raised $3,200,000 in 2017.
Fugro, a Netherlands-based geologic data company that generated €1.65 billion in revenue last year, has a payload launching on a future Loft Orbital satellite as a tech demo mission only.
The second OS-M1 is 19 m tall and weighs 20 metric tons and is designed to loft a 205-kilogram payload to 300-kilometer low Earth orbit.
The OS-M1 was designed to loft a 205-kilogram payload to 300-kilometer low Earth orbit (LEO).
A previous Chinese human lunar mission concept relied on the Long March 9 super-heavy-lift launcher with a 10-meter diameter that China aims to fly in 2028 and included an Earth-orbit rendezvous using a Long March 5B to loft the crew.