SAN FRANCISCO — York Space Systems established contact within three hours of the Dec. 1 launch of a commercial space-as-a-service mission for CACI International.
CACI supplied an optical communications demonstration and a resilient position, navigation and timing payload for York’s Bane commercial mission launched on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rideshare flight, York announced Dec. 4.
The mission “expands upon York’s rapidly growing commercial business and flight qualifies numerous new technologies which will be implemented on York’s future commercial constellations,” York CEO Dirk Wallinger told SpaceNews by email.
Bane was the first York mission to serve more than one commercial customer on a single platform. It was also the first satellite to be flown from York’s unclassified commercial mission operations center in Denver, Dirk Wallinger, York CEO and president, told SpaceNews by email.
York, founded in 2012, has won key military space contracts including a $615 million contract awarded in October by the U.S. Space Force Space Development Agency. With its expanding production lines, York is attracted government and commercial customers by offering complete satellite missions through streamlined contracting.
Bane was York’s “second commercial mission executed under our accelerated acquisition and execution program,” Wallinger said.
Melanie Preisser, York executive vice president, said in a statement, “We are proud to have successfully executed another commercial mission, showcasing our ultra-streamlined commercial acquisition and execution approach. We take great pride in being an end-to-end solution provider, offering integrated services that enable us to meet the evolving demands of our government and commercial customers, and the market at large.”
York completed construction earlier this year of a production facility designed to boost the Denver-based company’s capacity to more than 1,000 satellites per year.
