Orbital Logistics Vehicle (OLV)

The Skycorp Orbital Logistics Vehicle (OLV) ushers in a new architecture for satellites and orbital infrastructure. Instead of a fixed, purpose-built bus, the OLV is a common platform with a standardized interface that allows customized payloads from third parties to be hosted, exchanged and upgraded on orbit — doing for satellites what the Open Compute Project did for data-center hardware design.

The OLV is launched inside a protective container and assembled on orbit at the International Space Station. This approach allows the vehicle itself to use a lighter-weight design, since it does not need to be built to survive launch loads in its fully assembled configuration; the protective launch container absorbs those loads instead.

The backbone of the OLV architecture is the Intelligent Space Systems Interface (iSSI), a standardized bus interface that delivers power, data connectivity, bandwidth and physical/structural rigidity to hosted payloads. iSSI enables flexible integration of modular payloads, letting operators swap or add capability without redesigning the whole spacecraft. Skycorp flight-qualified the iSSI connector hardware through the Fluid Quick Exchange (FQE) experiment, delivered to and demonstrated aboard the International Space Station.

Combined with Skycorp’s software architecture, the OLV brings a cloud-computing-style operating model to space vehicles: modular, upgradeable payload “instances” hosted on a common, radiation-tolerant backbone, aimed at supporting a sustainable in-space logistics and servicing economy.