The firm Aerospacelab, Inc. recently opened up a brand new satellite manufacturing facility in Torrance, California. The company plans on being to put out, on average, two satellites per week on a single shift schedule. Increased satellite production is now becoming the standard now in the space hardware industry. I wanted to learn more about that and how it got so easy to make your own satellites. I got the chance to talk about it with Tina Ghatore, CEO of Aerospacelab North America.

Interview transcript:

Tina Ghatore Aerospace Lab, Inc. was established here in the U.S. just over a year ago, and that was part of the reason I joined this now six year old global company. We’re headquartered currently here in Palo Alto, California, but recently announced our new manufacturing assembly integration and test facility in Torrance, California, in the L.A. area. And one of our primary goals for this facility is to really tap into the market need around both government and commercial customers. With our heritage from our parent company, we have eight satellites in orbit today, and we’re looking to focus our efforts in the U.S. on the larger platforms that we make available to the lower Earth orbit and starting to get higher to address the needs, as I mentioned, both for U.S. government, specifically customers. And that comes in different flavors, and also the large volume commercial constellation providers. So excited to be in this approximately 40,000 square foot facility. It’s less than five years old, so we’re excited. And the first satellite integration activity will be taking place end of this year for one of our commercial customers. And that is Xona space systems. They have a really interesting payload. It’s a position navigation and tracking payload, but commonly referred to as Alt PNT alternative to gps. This is a ITAR designated payload, so it can’t leave the country. So it makes sense for us to do all of our integration build activity of our satellite platform. So we’re responsible for doing that for this commercial customer and our brand new facility. And that’s how we’re going to be inaugurated and hopefully keep the facility quite busy in the upcoming years.

Eric White Yeah. Reading the release, it was mentioned that you can create two satellites a day. For someone who’s not an industry executive like yourself, is that par for the course with facilities like this, or is that something that is setting apart with how new and brand new this facility is?

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Tina Ghatore It’s a smart way to do it. I don’t want to claim that we’ve broken some magic portion here, but it is a smart way to approach how you’re doing assembly integration and testing. You have different subsystems that are within the satellites that we develop in-house. So we’re very vertically integrated when it comes to core subsystems and how you bring in the structure itself. L.A. and the surrounding area are great source for a supply chain base. And so if you do smart assembly integration and test, you’re able to do the two satellites a week on a single shift in the space that we have. And the good news is we’re not starting from scratch. We have an operating facility that we’re mimicking today. That facility is able to do 24 satellites on a single shift, and we double that on a two shift basis. But we have now, we’re taking that blueprint, expanding it, taking into account that we’re doing both satellite platform development as well as payload integration, as well as development of some key what we call line replaceable units (LRUs). Just another way of using an acronym to say, subsystems for the satellites. So that’s kind of what the plan is say to satellites is what we’re we’re looking at averaging, but can expand to more depending on how the supply chain, internal and external comes into play.

Eric White Hey, we love our acronyms here at Federal News Network, so no worries at all there. Speaking to other companies and government entities about satellite production, can you just kind of speak to me on how that process has really gotten super, super efficient. And the cost of producing these satellites and creating these spaces available to produce these satellites has gone down dramatically. There’s been a good amount of vertical integration. You all aren’t the only one. It seems as if a formula is starting to develop, and folks are starting to catch wind of it.

Tina Ghatore Indeed. And it starts basically at the architecture of how the architectures and most satellite platforms are evolving. And you create a scalable modular architecture and the end customers are accepting of this sort of modularity. And it’s not that we’re telling our customers one size fits all. But what we’re saying is the modularity within the subsystems, whether you need more power or whether you need more capability around the vehicle size to accommodate your payload, all of these modularity elements and industrial design. A couple of decades ago, I don’t think I’m going to upset too many people by saying, Industrial designers were not in the room with system architects thinking through the modularity, the expandability, the scalability. And now we’ve got those people in the room right at the beginning figuring out, do I put my propulsion on this particular satellite plate and face? Do I put my power somewhere further? Where do I put my payload? Is it pointing to the ground to take some imagery?

Tina Ghatore So industrial design has come into play. And the folks that do what I traditionally assembly integration and test are influencing some of that design capability. Then you’ve got just technology moving forward in terms of are you using aluminum structures, are you using honeycomb structures, are you 3D printing? So some of those things have come into play as well, in terms of creating an assembly process that does that does not necessarily need to be all robotic. So some people start to think that everything has to be very much robotic to create efficiency. I think if you’ve got your work order instructions that are delivered to your technicians. Because think about who’s in that clean room facility. It’s the technicians that are following some very clear work instructions. I learned something a few months back, even the time it takes to screw, fasten something. And if you just change the tool that does that in terms of making it more automatic and then you can measure that automatic tool, the torque wrench that you can measure the exact torque. That saves a lot of time in terms of how long it takes for you to push a satellite or a platform down the line, so to speak. So I think we’re doing things smarter and more efficiently and using robots when we need to, but also just creating a we’ve learned a lot from the car industry and others in terms of how we layout supply chain, and how we lay out the actual plant itself. So I think some of those things are about to evolve in our industry.

Eric White Yeah. I’m curious to pick your brain as somebody who’s been in the satellite production industry as long as you have. A cheaper satellite to make less labor intensive like you just mentioned, is there the risk of a saturation point where satellites are a dime a dozen? And if everybody is throwing them up there, it might be good for you all. But space traffic is already on the minds of a lot of folks, a lot of doomsdayers that like to say, hey, we’re putting way too much stuff up there. I’m just curious to get your thoughts on that topic.

Tina Ghatore Indeed. I always say Space is hard, Space is large. But we have to be honest brokers in how we deploy and manage for our customers in space. If your logic doesn’t work, it’s space junk. But now there’s rules in terms of adopted globally or coming in to the adoption globally in terms of deorbit requirements. It used to be that in the geobelts, you would have to do some orbit raising and get it out, get the old satellite away or you de-orbit by letting it safely come through the atmosphere. And then the materials you use. You don’t want to have ceramics and glass. You’re trying to use demiseable materials as well. So material technology has evolved as well. And in terms of will it become a commodity? I get told it is a commodity today in terms of the price points that are being demanded. But I think that’s where the innovation comes into play, in terms of it’s a matter of do you want to innovate and do something that will last for three to five years in space? Or do you want to build something that needs to last 15 plus years? Some of the geo satellites were designed for 15 and they’re lasting 20 years. That means you’re carrying more propellant. You’re carrying all of these additional things.

Tina Ghatore In the low earth orbit (LEO). Many customers are government which you would never have imagined before, are accepting of the fact that a three year mission to be faster, to be cheaper is good to achieve the mission objectives of getting there and serving in the case of the Space Development Agency, our warfighter needs. Getting a proliferated war fighter space architecture is more important than trying to get it out there fast to meet the threat profile that we all live in today. To match that instead of try to build this very bespoke billion dollar satellite that’s going to a specific orbital location, that is known by our enemy, so to speak. And so I think balancing the end customer requirement, which has softened, not softened in terms of not meeting their mission objectives, quite the contrary. It will always meet their mission objectives. But softened in the sense that time to market is critical. The time to market phrase it was very commercial. But I see that as become time to market for all government and commercial customers. Even more government at the moment because of the threat profile that that we’re working at. And we’ve all got to be good citizens when it comes to space junk, space debris. And I think some of the material demise ability, evolving, that’s a good thing. I think some of the requirements around de-orbiting safely, de-orbiting being the critical word, I think some of those things that are coming into play will help manage some of that space junk out there.

Eric White And finishing up here, and you provide me a good segue. You’ve been at this a bit, and I’m curious about how that customer base has evolved to involve more government entities. Has your rolodex grown with.gov email addresses over the years? Because being a space executive nowadays means that you’re going to be involved in potentially the the nation’s national defense strategy. How have you changed your methodology, and the way you do things throughout the years?

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Tina Ghatore Yeah. On a personal level, absolutely. The Rolodex has grown and I’ve gotten pretty savvy on sam.gov, and the Arc and all of these kinds of portals that tell us of the need, the requirement out there. I think the US government entities, whether it’s Space Systems, Command Space Development Agency, MDA, NRO, NGIA. They’re all making such an effort to tap in to the commercial industry. So those of us have been at it for 28 plus years are starting to engage directly with entities that really in the previous couple of decades. I would say the nontraditional players like we are at Aerospace wouldn’t even get a chance to have face time with those entities. They would be gate kept by the primes. The traditional defense and prime contractors would be the gatekeepers to the end customer. Now we’re finding it really quite easy to engage directly with the end customer, whether we transact through a prime or with the end customer like space systems crime is a different story. So certainly I have the opportunity to now engage with decision makers, with innovators, with program managers and the user community. And to really understand what it’s like being down that value chain where data, real time data access is so critical for our security needs. And it’s not just a bunch of aerospace people coming up with cool tech. It’s like really understanding that my need is X, and that’s why I’m okay with a three year mission lifetime that I’m sending over to you. I’m not over engineering a product requirement. I’m focused more on the mission need.

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