Accelerating Like Never Before

Nearly two years ago, Lockheed Martin opened the doors to a state-of-the-art Small Satellite Processing & Delivery Center, otherwise known as the SPD Center. Nestled in the foothills of Littleton, Colorado, the low bay clean room is dedicated to the rapid development of small satellites. As the demand across industry shifts toward proliferated, resilient satellites and constellations, Lockheed Martin created the SPD Center to meet this need and have been continuously improving our processes to build small satellites faster than ever before.

This multi-million dollar facility is designed to build spacecraft quickly and efficiently. Equipped with six parallel assembly lines, it can easily be adjusted to meet different production needs. This allows us to produce up to 180 spacecraft per year, supporting a variety of customers and missions with different security requirements.

Doing Things Differently

From the start, the SPD Center was designed to be a highly efficient and agile facility for building small satellites. We used a digital replica of the factory, called a 'digital twin,' to plan and design the entire production process before we installed any equipment. This allowed us to test and refine our processes in a virtual environment, making sure everything was perfect before we started building actual satellites. We also created full-scale mockups of satellites using 3D printing, which let us practice and refine our production processes until we got them just right.

Slashing Timelines - Producing SmallSats at Scale

For the first time, Lockheed Martin is building small satellites at an unprecedented pace, and we're leading the way in the industry. Our SPD Center operates around the clock, every day of the year, and is allowing us to achieve some remarkable milestones:

• Completing the first round of tests in just one day, compared to one month previously
• Mechanically building a space vehicle in just seven days 
• Completing bus-to-payload mates in minutes by a single operator 

These achievements are impressive - but what's behind our ability to meet these accelerated timelines?

To achieve this significant increase in small satellite production, we've developed several key resources and approaches, including:

• Implementing flexible and efficient production techniques
• Creating automated testing procedures to reduce manual labor and increase speep
• Improving our supply chain management to ensure timely delivery of components and materials

This work has required our teams to be willing to take thoughtful and calculated risks to meet our schedule deadlines. As Graeme Radlo, Systems Integration & Test Engineering Manager, notes, "We're taking a careful approach to testing by focusing on the most important tests and applying them in a way that makes sense for the entire fleet. By streamlining our testing process, we can reduce the overall testing time while still maintaining the high standards of quality and reliability that our customers expect from us."

A Different Kind of Productivity Playlist

When it comes to testing our spacecraft, we're using automation in innovative ways. We've developed a system that uses a series of instructions, called 'scripts,' to automate many of the testing tasks. These scripts allow us to run tests quickly and efficiently, without needing manual intervention. We've created a collection of these scripts, which we call a 'playlist,' that enables us to run multiple tests in a row, saving time and increasing productivity.

This playlist is different from the music playlists you might listen to, but it has a similar effect - it helps us get things done more efficiently. Since the SPD Center opened in 2023, our team has written thousands of lines of code to automate our testing processes. For example, we've simplified a complex software loading process from 325 steps to just one step. Our automated system can handle errors and retries on its own, sending detailed reports to our engineers even when they're not on the clock.

So, What Does the Future Hold?

We're showcasing the capabilities of our SPD Center, demonstrating we're ready to produce small satellites at a large scale for a variety of customers and products. With our extensive experience and expertise in preparing spacecraft for launch, we can now deliver, test and support our customers faster than ever before.

Speed at scale - that's our SPD Center advantage.