If Xplore outgrows our big building there are adjacent buildings , so we could potentially expand our campus and take over this entire space someday .”
Xplore is working on two very different space vehicles as it pursues a goal to make space a service industry .
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The first is Xplore ’ s Xcraft , which will be the first spacecraft to be built at the Redmond site .
Just keep truckin ’ on
The Xcraft is a small ESPA-class satellite . ( If you ’ re not familiar , ESPA stands for External Secondary Payload Adaptor .
In lay terms , the Xcraft is like a delivery truck for satellites , Rich says .
The Xcraft is a next-generation spacecraft designed to a carry large volume of instruments . It can carry high-capability instruments such as a large synthetic aperture radar ( SAR ), or carry cubesats , satellites as small as 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm ( 1U ) that can be stacked to create satellites comparable in size to gallon or half-gallon milk cartons . Cubesats are cheap – a basic one can be outfitted for $ 50,000 or less – which makes them popular with universities : students at the University of Washington in 2019 built , launched and controlled a satellite they dubbed HuskySat-1 .
The problem for those small businesses and universities isn ’ t building the cubesats , Rich said . The problem is getting them to orbit . “ Their goal is not to design the truck – it ’ s getting a tech demo and gaining flight heritage .”
So Xplore will offer these smaller customers a service .
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Parts - Assemblies - Tooling - Prototyping
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2021 ISSUE NO . 22 37