ORBITAL
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Every ORBITAL vehicle and structure is assembled from the same six technology areas. Hover a system for its conceptual specification.
A hybrid architecture: deep-throttling chemical stages for launch and landing, solar-electric ion clusters for the long, efficient transfers between orbits.
Aluminium-lithium primary structure, ceramic-matrix composites for hot surfaces, and multilayer shielding that stops micrometeoroids and softens the radiation environment.
Vehicles that rendezvous, dock, refuel and reschedule themselves.
Roll-out photovoltaic arrays with a specific power far beyond terrestrial panels, paired with solid-state storage rated for the lunar night.
Optical crosslinks between relay spacecraft, radio to the surface.
Manipulators and mobile platforms that do the work no one should do in a suit: unloading cargo, laying cable, moving regolith, building the pad before the crew arrives.
Vehicles that move people, propellant and cargo between Earth, orbit and the Moon without being rebuilt between flights. The transfer fleet is the circulatory system of everything else ORBITAL builds.
Pressurised structures engineered for people to work in for months at a time — thermal control, radiation shielding, closed-loop life support and interiors designed around the human body in microgravity.
Landing pads, pressurised habitats, power fields and resource processing at the lunar south pole. The Moon is the first place off Earth where ORBITAL builds things that stay.
Cargo precursors, surface power, greenhouses and habitats sized for a permanent presence. Designed for a supply line measured in months, not hours.
A shared layer of relay, positioning and tracking spacecraft that lets every other ORBITAL system know where it is, where everything else is, and how to get there.
Large-area photovoltaic arrays and storage in orbit and on the surface. Power is the constraint on every ambition beyond Earth; ORBITAL treats it as infrastructure.