Lanteris Space Systems

Lanteris Space Systems (formerly Space Systems/Loral, SSL, and Maxar Space Systems) is an American manufacturer of satellites and space systems headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company designs and builds spacecraft for a wide variety of government and commercial customers, including high-powered direct-to-home broadcast satellites, commercial weather satellites, digital audio radio satellites, Earth observation satellites, and spot-beam satellites for data networking applications.

Founded in 1957 as Philco Western Development Laboratories and restructured as Space Systems/Loral in 1990, Lanteris operates a high-volume, fully integrated spacecraft production facility. The flagship IM-1300 platform has been the standard for geostationary communications satellites since 1989, with more than 99 spacecraft on orbit as of 2025. The modular panel design enables fast, flexible customization for government and commercial missions.

In addition to GEO platforms, Lanteris offers the IM-300 small satellite bus for LEO constellations and defense missions, and the IM-500 for high-agility, high-precision missions. The company also manufactures lunar landers (Nova-C, Nova-D, Super Nova), orbital transfer vehicles, and power and propulsion elements for deep space exploration.

In January 2026, Intuitive Machines completed its acquisition of Lanteris for approximately 800 million USD.