Lockheed Martin is a big name in space stuff. They do everything from sending astronauts to the moon to making satellites that watch the weather. But now, they’re also getting into making small satellites.
Last year, Lockheed Martin opened a special factory in Littleton called the “speed center” to make these small satellites. They want to build 180 of these little guys every year! Even though they haven’t finished making a satellite there yet, they’ve got 42 in the works.
Kevin Huttenhoff, who’s in charge of space stuff at Lockheed Martin, says they had to build the Littleton site from scratch because making small satellites is way different from their usual big ones. Regular satellites can be as big as a whole warehouse, but these small ones are more like the size of a fridge.
To get things just right, Lockheed Martin made a fancy virtual version of the factory before they even started building it. They used this virtual factory to figure out how to make everything work smoothly. They also use lots of robots to help speed up making the satellites and use less people.
Lockheed Martin decided to make small satellites because lots of people want them. They think it’s better to jump into making them now instead of waiting around.
Experts say that in the next ten years, the small satellite market will get really big. Right now, there have been about 7,000 small satellites launched, mostly by SpaceX. But in the next decade, there could be over 26,000 of them!