Jenam 2011Small satellite manufacturer and mission services provider Blue Canyon Technologies LLC (“BCT” or “Blue Canyon”), a wholly owned subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, today announced the launch of Slingshot 1, MISR-B, and a government customer satellite, aboard Virgin Orbit on July 1, 2022.
Slingshot 1 is the first-ever Blue Canyon 12U CubeSat bus carrying 19 payloads into low Earth orbit. Designed for Aerospace Corporation, the mission will demonstrate the accessibility of integrating numerous payloads into a single interface.
MISR-B is a 6U CubeSat bus, which Blue Canyon supplied with radio, GPS, reaction wheels, torsion bars, solar collectors, solar panels, batteries, navigation and traffic control system. guidance and power management. The program aims to demonstrate a robust, responsive, multi-mission CubeSat capability to meet a diverse set of requirements and deliver significantly more power to the payload.
“Currently, there is no widely accepted standard interface for payload integration,” said Jeff Schrader, president of Blue Canyon Technologies. “The success of the in-orbit mission will show that all payloads, large quantities, can plug into any small satellite, rather than customizing each interface.”
Blue Canyon is providing buses and additional spacecraft components for several missions slated for launch this summer, including TROPICS, Starling, Artemis-1 and CIRCE, a historic Virgin Orbit launch. In collaboration with the US Naval Research Laboratory and the UK Defense Science Technology Laboratory, Blue Canyon will provide twin 6U CubeSats, which will fly in a circular orbit to measure the Earth’s ionosphere and particle radiation environment. CIRCE, Coordinated Ionospheric Reconstruction CubeSat Experiment, will be the first UK satellite to be launched from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay.
