Benchmark to triple creation capacity to satisfy need – SpaceNews
COLORADO SPRINGS – Satellite propulsion startup Benchmark Space Techniques introduced ideas April 5 to triple creation capacity to meet up with growing demand from customers for its Starling and Halcyon propulsion units.
More than the up coming 18 months, Burlington, Vermont-based Benchmark strategies to deliver more than 150 propulsion methods for govt and industrial satellites destined for small Earth, geostationary and cislunar orbit.
The total market has found a transition from the early stage of constellations, exactly where buyers have been constructing 1 or two of these satellites, to consumers “now scaling up to make 10, 50 or 100,” Benchmark CEO Ryan McDeviitt instructed SpaceNews. “We’re developing out to assistance those people buyers.”
Final calendar year, Benchmark demonstrated the overall performance of its Halcyon thruster on an undisclosed governing administration satellite mission.
“It proved that the main idea, the essential notion, performs,” McDevitt explained. “Getting the flight heritage and becoming able to communicate to people, when we’re underneath [a nondisclosure agreement] about the performance characteristics” led to extra agreement awards.
Benchmark is getting ready to open up an office in the United Kingdom, where by the corporation not too long ago signed its very first deal.
“We’ve noticed fantastic alignment with the providers there,” McDevitt claimed. “They’re fascinated in room sustainability, imagining about place as a all-natural useful resource and the use of inexperienced propulsion.”
Due to the fact proving Halycon in orbit, a great deal of Benchmark’s notice has targeted on advancement of a variant, the Halcyon Avant inexperienced bipropellant propulsion program.
Halycon Avant is scheduled to fly for the initially time on a Spaceflight Sherpa-LTC orbital transfer car scheduled to launch later this yr on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
7 undisclosed govt and professional customers are scheduled to start missions, which will generally include things like several spacecraft, with Benchmark thrusters in 2022. One more 12 to 15 missions with Benchmark propulsion units are slated for start in 2023.
Just after originally determining complications with the thrusters on the Sherpa-LTC, Benchmark labored intently with engineers from SpaceX and Sherpa maker Spaceflight “to conduct technological diligence to guarantee upcoming mission accomplishment,” McDevitt mentioned. “We continue being completely aligned with Spaceflight and SpaceX and are rapidly approaching the debut mission of the Sherpa-LTC orbital transfer vehicle powered by a Benchmark Halcyon Avant propulsion program a little bit later on this calendar year, with other missions with Spaceflight and SpaceX to comply with.”
Benchmark was started in 2017 with two employees. By the end of 2021, the corporation had a 35-person staff. Benchmark now employs 50 individuals, is on keep track of to retain the services of 20 much more by the conclusion of the 12 months and employ 120 men and women by mid-2023.
COLORADO SPRINGS – Satellite propulsion startup Benchmark Space Techniques introduced ideas April 5 to triple creation capacity to meet up with growing demand from customers for its Starling and Halcyon propulsion units.
More than the up coming 18 months, Burlington, Vermont-based Benchmark strategies to deliver more than 150 propulsion methods for govt and industrial satellites destined for small Earth, geostationary and cislunar orbit.
The total market has found a transition from the early stage of constellations, exactly where buyers have been constructing 1 or two of these satellites, to consumers “now scaling up to make 10, 50 or 100,” Benchmark CEO Ryan McDeviitt instructed SpaceNews. “We’re developing out to assistance those people buyers.”
Final calendar year, Benchmark demonstrated the overall performance of its Halcyon thruster on an undisclosed governing administration satellite mission.
“It proved that the main idea, the essential notion, performs,” McDevitt explained. “Getting the flight heritage and becoming able to communicate to people, when we’re underneath [a nondisclosure agreement] about the performance characteristics” led to extra agreement awards.
Benchmark is getting ready to open up an office in the United Kingdom, where by the corporation not too long ago signed its very first deal.
“We’ve noticed fantastic alignment with the providers there,” McDevitt claimed. “They’re fascinated in room sustainability, imagining about place as a all-natural useful resource and the use of inexperienced propulsion.”
Due to the fact proving Halycon in orbit, a great deal of Benchmark’s notice has targeted on advancement of a variant, the Halcyon Avant inexperienced bipropellant propulsion program.
Halycon Avant is scheduled to fly for the initially time on a Spaceflight Sherpa-LTC orbital transfer car scheduled to launch later this yr on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
7 undisclosed govt and professional customers are scheduled to start missions, which will generally include things like several spacecraft, with Benchmark thrusters in 2022. One more 12 to 15 missions with Benchmark propulsion units are slated for start in 2023.
Just after originally determining complications with the thrusters on the Sherpa-LTC, Benchmark labored intently with engineers from SpaceX and Sherpa maker Spaceflight “to conduct technological diligence to guarantee upcoming mission accomplishment,” McDevitt mentioned. “We continue being completely aligned with Spaceflight and SpaceX and are rapidly approaching the debut mission of the Sherpa-LTC orbital transfer vehicle powered by a Benchmark Halcyon Avant propulsion program a little bit later on this calendar year, with other missions with Spaceflight and SpaceX to comply with.”
Benchmark was started in 2017 with two employees. By the end of 2021, the corporation had a 35-person staff. Benchmark now employs 50 individuals, is on keep track of to retain the services of 20 much more by the conclusion of the 12 months and employ 120 men and women by mid-2023.