LeoStella’s factory in Tukwila, Washington. Photo: LeoStella

Loft Orbital has expanded its production agreement with LeoStella for multiple satellite buses under a contract announced Thursday. LeoStella will provide additional LEO-100 buses, based on its existing product line of ESPA-class buses. The number of buses and financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

The companies have an ongoing relationship, and Loft Orbital procured buses from LeoStella in 2020. Loft Orbital said that these buses were used for the YAM-3 mission that launched in 2020 for customers Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Eutelsat, the YAM-5 mission which is launching in 2022. Loft Orbital operates satellite infrastructure and flies customer payloads as a service. The company uses common bus designs for its missions, which it says shields customers from technical and schedule risks. 

“Our strategy has been to partner with best-in-class bus providers with significant on-orbit heritage and active production lines,” said Pierre-Damien Vaujour Loft Orbital CEO. “We focus our efforts on the hardware and software products that enable us to treat these buses as payload agnostic platforms, allowing us to fly any payload onboard and provide our customers a high degree of operational control.”

LeoStella is a joint venture between Thales Alenia Space and BlackSky. Its factory is located in Tukwila, Washington.