Loft Orbital Selects Syrlinks High-Data-Rate X-Band Transmitter for Their “Longbow” Satellites

SYRLINKS, a worldwide leader in the design of RF Communication systems for Space, and Loft Orbital, a pioneer in providing Space Infrastructure as a service, announced their partnership in the integration of XONOS, Syrlinks’s latest generation of High-Data-Rate X-Band Transmitters to Loft Orbital’s “Longbow” spacecraft. Longbow – based on an Airbus’ Arrow platform improved to support high-performance, multi-payload missions – allows Loft Orbital to accelerate and simplify how space projects are deployed and managed at scale. The company offers a truly end-to-end service enabling customers to rapidly deploy and operate their payloads on reliable high-performance satellites at an unprecedented speed, and simplicity.

The new X-Band Transmitters designed by Syrlinks and referenced as “XONOS” is perfectly adapted to operate the next generation of Earth Observation services over microsatellites. It has especially been designed to achieve high data rate capability and brings maximum in-flight configuration flexibility using the DVB-S2 modulation scheme.

“We are very proud for having been selected by Loft Orbital for this project. It’s a great opportunity for us to highlight the unmatched capabilities of the DVB-S2-based signal performances for High-Data-Rate downlink transmission,” says Eric PINSON, Director of Space activity at Syrlinks.

“It is a great recognition of a work of several years to design New-Space RF communication designs, highly reliable and bringing cutting-edge transmitting performances.”, adds Eric.

“Following our purchase of more than 15 satellite platforms from Airbus earlier this year, Loft is happy to continue investing in France and leverage Syrlinks’ high-data rate transceivers to be able to downlink vast amounts of data for our clients” said Emmanuelle Meric, Managing Director of Loft Orbital Technologies. “I would like to take the opportunity to thank our partners at CNES and ESA for their support in the development of the Longbow platform.”

Elodie Viau, Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications at ESA, said: “I am proud that our investment in the In-Orbit Demonstrator by Airbus (IODA) platform – made via ESA’s Pioneer Programme – is producing impressive commercial outcomes. We look forward to contributing further to the latest version of this Airbus platform, which will meet the needs of new space companies such as Loft Orbital, and support their objective of simplifying and accelerating European access to space.”

Jean-Marc Astor, Director of Strategy at CNES, said: “This partnership between Loft Orbital & Syrlinks to develop a spacecraft based on the Airbus platform is a perfect example of the unique power of the French space ecosystem. These three international players have been supported by CNES on their projects (Arrow, Longbow, and XONOS), so I am really eager to see soon in orbit the result of their collaboration which will provide useful new space services.”