NanoAvionics has customers ready for its CubeSats built in Midland
NanoAvionics is yet to release details but the firm has found customers for its nanosats which will be built in Texas, stated its CEO Buzas. The company is a spinoff from Vilnius University located in Lithuania, with around 80 employees working at its R&D division in western and Northern Europe. It will be moving most of its manufacturing and R&D projects to the USA next year. Its parent company is currently refurbishing the Texas plant, which had previously been used by XCOR Aerospace.
CEO Buzas stated that they were out looking for viable models that would allow their presence in the US market for several years. Brent Abbott, who has previously worked with SST, AAC Microtec and ASO, was hired by NanoAvionics to lead its North America division. He stated this was his 3rd time moving a company based in Europe to the United States market.
Since 50% of all smallsat global demand is from the USA, NanoAvionics is quite keen to access the US market. Apart from that, a few US government customers have laws dictating them to purchase only those sats that are made in the USA.
This Texas facility, located in Midland, would produce new sats for the US market. It would also manufacture sats for European customers needing high levels of volume production, stated Abbott. However, a few technologies that are developed for the US market won’t be exported to other countries, he said.
Despite the smallsat industry being extremely competitive, NanoAvionis has been growing by leaps and bounds. Staff count doubled and revenue grew 4x or 5x times last year alone, stated Buzas. Back in June, Norway’s KSS, Belgium’s Antwerp Space and Nanoavionics announced that they had raised over 10M euros for on-orbit demonstrations of IoT satellite constellation.
The company’s execs state that it would offer lowest prices for 12 & 6 unit CubeSats that are radiation tolerant as well. They have orbital lifespans ranging between 5-10 years.
