Tyvak (part of Terran Orbital/Lockheed)

Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems was founded in 2011 in Irvine, California, by Dr. Jordi Puig-Suari (co-inventor of the CubeSat standard) and Scott MacGillivray, building on more than a decade of CubeSat heritage from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Tyvak quickly became a leading supplier of nanosatellite buses, propulsion, and mission integration services for government and commercial small-satellite missions.

In 2014, Tyvak was acquired by Terran Orbital Corporation, becoming the core of Terran Orbital's US manufacturing operations while keeping its Irvine, California campus as the company's headquarters and primary production site (with additional manufacturing hubs in Florida and Italy). Terran Orbital went public on the NYSE in 2022 and grew into one of the largest vertically integrated small-satellite manufacturers in the United States, producing standardized spacecraft buses under the Triumph, Renegade, Voyager, Excelsior, Nebula, Ambassador, and Enterprise product lines.

At the end of October 2024, Lockheed Martin completed its acquisition of Terran Orbital, folding the Tyvak-founded Irvine facility and its satellite manufacturing lines into Lockheed Martin's space business. Today the entity continues to operate as Terran Orbital, a Lockheed Martin Company, delivering CubeSats, ESPA-class buses, and full mission support (design, manufacturing, integration, launch, and operations) for defense, intelligence, Earth observation, communications, and deep-space missions, with flight heritage including NASA's CAPSTONE and PTD lunar/technology-demo missions.

Customers include NASA, ESA, the Space Development Agency (SDA), the European Defence Agency (EDA), and Lockheed Martin itself, spanning national security, scientific, and commercial small-satellite programs.