U.S. satellite manufacturer Apex has introduced its largest spacecraft to date, a new satellite bus aimed at both commercial and government constellation operators.<\/p>\n
The company said on May 28 it is now accepting orders for Comet<\/em>, a large satellite platform designed to support payloads exceeding 500 kilograms and generating more than five kilowatts of power. The bus features a flat form factor built to fit within a five-meter payload fairing, making it compatible with commonly used launch vehicles.<\/p>\n The Comet<\/em> platform complements Apex\u2019s smaller Aries<\/em> and Nova<\/em> buses, and had been part of the company\u2019s roadmap since its founding. However, high levels of customer interest prompted Apex to accelerate its development.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been getting a lot of inbound interest,\u201d said Ian Cinnamon, chief executive of Apex. He noted that potential commercial users are eyeing Comet<\/em> for Starlink-style constellations targeting applications such as direct-to-device and Internet of Things services. \u201cAnytime you need a very large antenna in orbit looking down at the ground, it can be very useful,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Defense customers have also expressed interest in using Comet<\/em> for programs like the proposed Golden Dome missile defense system. \u201cThey\u2019re thinking about how that fits into the overall architecture for things like the sensor layers and space-based interceptor,\u201d Cinnamon added.<\/p>\n The company said it will continue producing all three satellite buses\u2014Aries<\/em>, Nova<\/em>, and Comet<\/em>\u2014at its Los Angeles factory. However, delivery of Comet<\/em> will require a lead time of 24 months, with typical orders expected to range between 10 and 20 spacecraft. \u201cWith Comet<\/em>, it\u2019s rare that someone will want one or two of them,\u201d Cinnamon said.<\/p>\n Apex emphasized that the new platform benefits from a vertically integrated supply chain and incorporates in-house technology developed for its earlier buses. \u201cBeing able to take those and then basically put them over into the larger form factor of Comet<\/em> has let us create a vehicle that not only has the very unique shape that lets you put as many as possible in a Falcon 9 or any five-meter fairing, but it also lets us drive down on the price point to something where business cases actually start to make sense,\u201d Cinnamon said.<\/p>\n While Apex has not disclosed pricing, Cinnamon said the cost per Comet<\/em> unit will likely fall in the \u201cmid-single-digit millions\u201d of dollars.<\/p>\n The launch of Comet<\/em> completes Apex\u2019s original vision of offering a range of small, medium, and large spacecraft platforms. The company currently has no plans to develop larger buses optimized for vehicles like SpaceX\u2019s Starship.<\/p>\n \u201cI love the idea of it, but the reality is that there\u2019s no one who\u2019re really going to buy that right now,\u201d Cinnamon said. \u201cWe focus on where the market is today and where there\u2019s money to be made today.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. satellite manufacturer Apex has introduced its largest spacecraft to date, a new satellite bus aimed at both commercial and government constellation operators. The company said on May 28 it is now accepting orders for Comet, a large satellite platform designed to support payloads exceeding 500 kilograms and generating more than five kilowatts of power. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6036,3097,6037],"class_list":["post-20004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-apex","tag-comet","tag-ian-cinnamon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}