Boeing Co., which is designing a reusable space plane for the U.S. military, has completed the takeover of a firm that builds small satellites like those the craft is designed to carry as President Trump broadens America’s off-world power.
The Chicago-based planemaker didn’t say how much it paid for Millennium Space Systems, which builds high-performance satellites weighing from 50 to 6,000 kilograms for national security clients. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., Millennium has about 260 employees who will join Boeing’s $21 billion Defense, Space and Security Division. They will report to Mark Cherry, head of Boeing’s Phantom Works product-development unit.
“We expect the acquisition to fill out the low end of Boeing’s existing satellite family and take advantage of the market pivot to smaller, less expensive satellites,” said Robert Spingarn, a New York-based analyst with Credit Suisse. “Larger-scale satellites continue to fall out of favor relative to more flexible, less complex SmallSat constellations. From a national security perspective, SmallSats are more resilient, presenting smaller, dispersed targets for highly sophisticated opponents.”
Boeing, like rival military contractors, is taking advantage of a boom from the White House’s interest in space exploration and defense, with Trump proposing missions to the moon and Mars while developing a Space Force.
The defense budget the president signed earlier this year includes $1 billion for space programs, and the administration is asking Congress to allocate another $8 billion for such efforts over the next five years.
The space plane that Boeing is developing for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is one piece of that effort. Known as the Phantom Express, it’s an unmanned craft designed to carry satellites from 400 to 1,300 kilograms into orbit, then return to Earth and be ready for another flight in a matter of hours.
