YAM Platform
Loft Orbital
Loft Orbital's YAM (Yet Another Mission) is a rideshare hosted-payload satellite platform offering infrastructure-as-a-service in orbit, letting customers fly sensors or software without owning a satellite.
Technical specifications
- Product type
- Rideshare hosted-payload smallsat platform / space infrastructure-as-a-service
- Bus options
- Blue Canyon Technologies MicroSat/ESPAsat (YAM-2); LeoStella bus (YAM-3, YAM-5, YAM-6); Airbus Arrow 150 'Longbow' (YAM-8 and later)
- YAM-2 mass
- ~80 kg
- Payload adapter
- Hub - universal payload adapter, bus- and payload-agnostic
- Mission operations software
- Cockpit - web-based mission control software
- Onboard compute
- CPU and GPU compute nodes with GPU-accelerated AI/ML processing (YAM-6, YAM-9)
- Example hosted payloads
- Hyperspectral imagers, RGB imagers, software-defined radios, IoT RF payloads
- Flight heritage
- YAM-2 (Jun 2021), YAM-3 (2021), YAM-5 (Jan 2023), YAM-6 (2024, first virtual-mission satellite), YAM-8 (Mar 2025, first Longbow satellite), YAM-9 (Nov 2025, Transporter-15)
- Launch vehicles used
- SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter rideshare missions
About
YAM (Yet Another Mission) is Loft Orbital’s flagship satellite-as-a-service / infrastructure-as-a-service product line. Each YAM spacecraft pairs a standardized, flight-proven satellite bus (sourced from partners such as Blue Canyon Technologies, LeoStella, or Airbus/Longbow) with Loft’s proprietary ‘Hub’ universal payload adapter, providing standardized power, command-and-control, compute, mechanical, thermal, and communications interfaces to hosted customer payloads. Combined with Loft’s ‘Cockpit’ web-based mission operations software, this lets government, commercial, and research customers integrate and fly imagers, RF payloads, or technology demonstrations on a shared satellite without designing, building, or operating their own spacecraft. Flight heritage includes YAM-2 (launched June 2021, ~80 kg, hosting Orbital Sidekick and a UAE agency hyperspectral imager), YAM-3 and YAM-5 (LeoStella buses, supporting DARPA Blackjack), YAM-6 (2024, the first ‘virtual mission’-enabled satellite carrying imagers and a software-defined radio), YAM-8 (launched March 2025 on Transporter-13, the first satellite on the upgraded Airbus Arrow 150 ‘Longbow’ platform), and YAM-9 (deployed November 2025 on Transporter-15, demonstrating networked compute nodes for AI workloads). Loft Orbital has launched over 14 satellites and served 60+ customers through this infrastructure-as-a-service model.
Documentation
No public datasheet yet — request the datasheet / ICD from the supplier.