Defense giant Lockheed Martin announced Nov. 19 that its new mid-size satellite platform will make its orbital debut next year aboard a Firefly Aerospace rocket.
The LM 400 satellite bus — roughly the size of a household refrigerator — represents Lockheed’s bid to capture a sweet spot in the satellite market: missions requiring more power and payload capacity than small satellites can provide, but not demanding the complexity of traditional large satellites.
I wonder what the pricing is and whether it’s competitive with the newer bus manufacturers.
It’s interesting that LM is buying Terran while making this bus that overlaps with Terran’s bigger offerings (“Embassador” and “Enterprise” buses, apparently).
An LM 400 is too big for Electron, but you could fit 3 in Neutron. It also looks bigger than the Rocket Lab buses (although I can’t find many specifics on those?) but I guess it would compete with Lightning and Pioneer.