Terran Orbital (NYSE:LLAP) shares climbed on Monday after the company announced the opening a new 60,000-square-foot satellite manufacturing space at its Irvine, California facility.
The addition takes the total size of its Irvine manufacturing complex to roughly 98,000 square feet and will enable it to boost satellite production from an estimated 10 satellites per month to more than 20.
Its shares were up 10% at $1.38 by midday in New York.
The new facility will support the company’s Responsive Space initiative, which aims to provide customers with satellite business within just 30 days and complete satellite systems with integrated payloads within 60 days.
“The Ukraine war really showed the deficit that we have in space; there isn't enough intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to cover for the 30-plus conflict zones that are going around the world,” Terran Orbital co-founder, chairman and CEO Mark Bell told Proactive in an interview.
“The (US) government has been talking for years about responsive space, meaning to build things quickly and get in orbit quickly but that's been a dream until now. With SpaceX and the proliferation at launch and their ability to get things up on Rideshares. And with people like us who are able to build satellites quickly and efficiently, responsive space is truly becoming a reality.”
Also supporting its growth plans, Terran Orbital announced last week a new lineup of seven standard satellite bus platforms that it said will establish new benchmarks for satellite technology for the coming decade.
The full product line of seven ITAR-compliant bus classes ranges from the largest, Enterprise, to the smallest, Triumph.
While it will continue to offer fully custom platforms to meet unique specifications, the company said the standard platforms will help it to achieve its vision of meeting mission requirements at scale, driving down the cost of the satellite, and increasing their functionality using standard components that roll up into configurations that quickly and effectively satisfy the needs of the US Department of Defense (DoD), its primary customer, as well as research customers.
“Between those seven buses, you can do almost any mission you need to do whether it's 5G, Internet of Things, electrical optical imaging, synthetic aperture radar, hyperspectral imaging, communications... Whatever the need be, those seven buses will meet those needs,” Bell said.
The company is currently manufacturing 42 satellite buses on behalf of Lockheed Martin for the US Space Development Agency’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer Program, a mesh network in low Earth orbit that will support the US’s military operations and other satellites and constellations.
Terran Orbital is a leading manufacturer of satellite products primarily serving the aerospace and defense industries. The company provides end-to-end satellite solutions by combining satellite design, production, launch planning, mission operations, and on-orbit support to meet the needs of the most demanding military, civil, and commercial customers.
Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com