Loft Orbital to Acquire More Than 15 Arrow Satellite Platforms
Airbus will supply space start-up Loft Orbital with more than fifteen satellite platforms derived from the Airbus Arrow platform. Arrow is the foundational satellite platform of the OneWeb constellation. There are 394 Airbus Arrow platforms in orbit for the OneWeb constellation and a further 254 are being produced to complete the 648 spacecraft required by OneWeb. With this acquisition, Loft Orbital confirms its intention to make the Airbus Arrow platform a true workhorse enabling its service business model.
"Leveraging Airbus engineering experience and Airbus OneWeb Satellites production capabilities is enabling us to truly bring Loft's vision to life."
Pierre-Damien Vaujour, CEO of Loft Orbital.
Loft Orbital offers end-to-end service enabling customers to rapidly deploy and operate their payloads on high-performance satellites. Loft Orbital has also contracted Airbus to modify the Arrow platform to make it suitable for a wider range of longer lifetime missions and applications.
Airbus previously benefited from public support to develop the Arrow platform and OneWeb pilot line in Toulouse.
“This groundbreaking contract between start-up Loft Orbital and global space leader Airbus is very good news. It demonstrates the uptake of New Space companies in France and the synergy across the space ecosystem for developing industry wide innovation," said Bruno Le Maire, French minister for the Economy, Finances and the Recovery. "It also testifies the speed at which the French space ecosystem is growing, with start-ups, SMEs, and large groups working together to provide world-class solutions, and fully validates the ongoing government strategy and initiatives to develop a vibrant and growing next space innovation ecosystem. I am very pleased that the project presented by Loft with the support of Airbus relies on French suppliers, more than 60% of the value being created in France.”
"Leveraging Airbus engineering experience and Airbus OneWeb Satellites production capabilities is enabling us to truly bring Loft's vision to life. While we are using this initial procurement to deliver to our customers who have ordered services based on a few tens of satellites, we see this as an opportunity to offer much larger constellation services to governments and companies worldwide," said Pierre-Damien Vaujour, CEO of Loft Orbital. "In addition, the level of support we have received in France, and the quality of the engineering talent, is simply unmatched and we are looking forward to growing the company here in Toulouse.”
The improvements to the Arrow platform, including all the engineering, qualification, test, and production of the first few spacecraft will be performed by Airbus in Toulouse. The production at scale of the remaining Arrow-derived platforms will be performed by Airbus OneWeb Satellites (AOS).
(Image provided with Airbus news release)