Spacecraft bus developer and manufacturer Apex on Monday said it will begin deliveries in 2025 of its newest product launch, Nova, an ESPA-Grande class satellite bus that can host payloads from 200 to 500 kilograms.
The Los Angeles-based startup has been developing a family of standardized, configurable bus platforms with a goal of delivering products within weeks of an order.
“Nova is ideal for customers looking to launch constellations requiring more power, higher mass, and other performance factors without sacrificing speed and production reliability,” Ian Cinnamon, co-founder and CEO of Apex, said in a statement.
Apex said that Nova is available in base and heavy configuration packages, the former fitting in a SpaceX Falcon 9 XL rideshare envelope. It also said the platform can provide 2.5 kilowatts of orbit average power to 500 kilograms of payload.
The customer focus for Nova includes the Space Development Agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture and classified programs, the company said.
Apex in March launched its first spacecraft, the Aries SN1, on a SpaceX rideshare. Aries was designed and launched in a year. In August, the company introduced GEO Aries, an ESPA-class satellite that will begin delivering in 2026. GEO Aries is Apex’s first bus designed for geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) missions and the company has said U.S. government customers have already made purchases of the new platform.