Platform update ·

Satellite platforms are now a category of their own

Satellite buses and platform kits are now a separate category: 270 platforms from 106 companies, filtered by payload mass and power, power generation, pointing, delta-v, design life, orbit and radio band — in the engineering console, the API and MCP.

Complete satellite platforms — buses and platform kits from PocketQube and CubeSat sizes to ESPA-class and geostationary buses — used to sit in the same pool as bare CubeSat frames. They now form their own category in the typed specification layer: 270 platforms from 106 companies, with values taken from vendor datasheets and product pages, each citing its source.

  • Chosen the way a bus is chosen. Filter by what the payload gets — payload mass, orbit-average payload power, payload volume in U or litres — and by the bus itself: power generation, battery, pointing accuracy, delta-v, design life, orbit and radio band, CubeSat size.
  • Plain questions work. In the engineering console: “6U platform with at least 20 W for the payload”, “платформа 6U, нагрузка до 5 кг, для SSO”, “platforms for GEO”, “which platforms have X-band downlink over 100 Mbps”. A payload of “up to 5 kg” is read as the mass the bus must carry, not as the bus mass.
  • Dry mass and wet mass kept apart. Platform dry mass, maximum satellite wet mass and payload mass are separate fields, and masses are shown in kilograms.
  • Honest gaps. Where a vendor does not publish a figure, the answer says so and puts the field on the list of questions to ask the vendor.

For machines: GET /wp-json/kls/v1/mrd-match?category=platforms&paymass_min_g=5000&form_u=6&orbit=SSO, the MCP tools match_components and ask_console, and the OpenAPI description with every parameter — see how to connect.