Terran Orbital is investing $300 million to build the world’s largest commercial spacecraft facility in Florida.
The company, which makes small satellites and has a strategic partnership with Lockheed Martin, will build a fully Industry 4.0-enabled space vehicle manufacturing facility at the Launch and Landing Facility on Merritt Island, Fla.—formerly the Space Shuttle landing facility. The facility will also function as the company’s headquarters.
The 660,000-square-foot factory (that’s more than 11 football fields) will consist of 10 automated and augmented hangars capable of producing a variety of space vehicles—thousands per year. The facility will feature an AI-controlled supply chain that will support the company’s mission assurance and customer satisfaction commitments. On the factory floor, 3D printing and additive manufacturing technologies will allow Terran Orbital to deliver space vehicles to market rapidly. Technologies will also enable the company to print and assemble cutting-edge circuit boards while maintaining high quality and consistency. The factory will also use augmented and assisted workforce product lines to meet demands for a wide variety of complex electronic and mechanical devices.
“Not only will we be able to expand our production capabilities to meet the growing demand for our products, but we will also bring valuable space vehicle manufacturing opportunities and capabilities to the State of Florida,” said Marc Bell, cofounder and chief executive officer of Terran Orbital. “By the end of 2025, we’re going to create approximately 2,100 new jobs with an average wage of $84,000.”
The factory is currently in the design phase, with groundbreaking expected to take place by summer 2022. When it reaches full capacity, the factory will be able to produce 1,000 small satellites, and a million satellite components, a year.
“We’ll be building the world’s most extensive satellite assembly facility,” said Bell. “We’ll bring all aspects of satellite creation, manufacturing, and production into one place.”
The company will continue to undertake satellite design, engineering and development work at its Irvine, Calif. location—which the company also plans to expand.
The factory will be ideally situated to support space launches—the company doesn’t manufacture launchers, just the satellites themselves. Being situated just a few miles from Cape Canaveral Launch Complexes 40 and 41, and Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pads 39A and 39B, is likely to help facilitate partnerships with launch providers.
The factory will help Terran Orbital to keep up with the rapidly growing demands of the space industry: analysts anticipate that by 2030, 50,000 satellites will be deployed into orbit. The market is expected to grow more than 20 percent from 2019 to 2026.
Terran Orbital has plans to deploy its own satellite constellation of radar-based satellites, which will be able to see through storms, clouds and other obstacles that interfere with data collection from orbit—with proprietary Earth observation technology and ground software.
Read more about the growing satellite market at The Era of Satellite Constellations Has Arrived.