Blue Canyon’s ESPA Grande Saturn to power QS-1 mission

Blue Canyon Technologies (BCT), the provider of small satellites and spacecraft systems components, has announced its ESPA Grande Saturn spacecraft bus will be a part of the maiden QS-1 mission of Quantum Space in October 2024.

The company – which is based in Boulder, Colorado – is a subsidiary of Raytheon Technologies, having been bought two years ago.

Cislunar

QS-1 will fly in cislunar space primarily around the two Earth-Moon-Lagrange Points 1 and 2, or EM-L1 and EM-L2, to help establish commercial operations for Quantum. Mission objectives will include producing space domain awareness data products, hosting customer payloads, advanced cislunar navigation methods and autonomous station keeping.

The mission will use commercial ground station networks for space-to-ground communication, with mission and payload control being conducted from a Quantum control center.

“Our Saturn product, with key enhancements for deep space, will provide Quantum Space with an architecture that has been designed specifically for these types of missions – a quiet, stable, agile platform to optimize use of the Quantum suite of instruments,” said Jeff Schrader, president of BCT.

Buses

The company highlights its Saturn-class buses include advanced propulsion, a robust power system, command and data handling, radio frequency communications and dedicated payload interfaces capable of hosting a variety of payload phenomenologies in the LEO, GEO, cislunar and deep space orbital regimes.

BCT will also be providing the satellite bus for the UK’s Dstl’s miniaturised space weather instrumentation suite, which is due to be among the satellites aboard the imminent Virgin Orbit launch from Spaceport Cornwall.

You can read more about the ESPA Grande Saturn 24” launch vehicle interface online.