Loft Orbital

One of six satellite deployments from the SpaceX Transporter CAS500-2 mission and a step closer to completion of the EarthDaily constellation MURI, which was launched into low-Earth orbit in January 2023, is not NASA’s first space-based infrared radiometer, but it is one of NASA’s smallest. MURI flies through space at roughly seven kilometers per second as a hosted payload on Loft Orbital’s YAM5 platform. Ball Aerospace announced plans April 11 to work with Loft Federal and Microsoft’s Azure Orbital on the Space Development Agency’s National Defense Space Architecture Experimental Testbed program, known as NExT.