Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto

Most Palo Alto tech companies make software, chips or gadgets. One makes satellites the size of a small bus. For decades a factory off Fabian Way, in the flat south end of town near Highway 101, has designed and assembled communications satellites for television, radio, internet and government customers around the world. The business has changed owners and names many times. Space Systems/Loral, the name it carried from 1990 to the early 2010s, is still how many locals know it.

This profile follows the company from its Philco roots to its 2026 sale to Intuitive Machines, with a focus on what happened in Palo Alto. For the neighborhood around it, see our guide to south Palo Alto.

One factory, many names

The quickest way to follow the story is through its names:

Philco and the first space years

The company dates its beginning to 1957, when the electronics maker Philco formed its Western Development Laboratories. The timing matters. The Soviet Union launched Sputnik that October. The US government then poured money into rockets, satellites and the ground stations to track them. The Peninsula already had Stanford, Varian, Hewlett-Packard and a growing defense electronics industry. Lockheed had opened its own Palo Alto research lab in 1956 and was building a missile and space campus in Sunnyvale. Our Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center profile covers that neighbor.

Philco's lab built one of the early milestones. Courier 1B, launched in 1960, was the world's first active repeater satellite, meaning it received signals and sent them back down rather than just reflecting them. Wikipedia credits it to Philco's Western Development Labs.

Sources do not agree on exactly where each Philco and Ford unit sat in the early years. Wikipedia's Ford Aerospace article places the Space Systems Division in Palo Alto and the Western Development Laboratories in San Jose in later years, while also saying WDL was in Palo Alto. We have not pinned down the date the Fabian Way site opened, so we leave it out.

The Ford Aerospace years

Ford Motor Company bought Philco. The space business became part of Ford Aerospace. That division was based in Dearborn, Michigan, with major units in Palo Alto, San Jose and Newport Beach. The Palo Alto unit was the Space Systems Division, which designed and built satellites.

The plant shaped its corner of Palo Alto. South Palo Alto filled with tract houses in the 1950s and 1960s, many of them Eichlers. Engineers bought homes near work. One longtime resident of the Greendell neighborhood told the Palo Alto Weekly that he chose it in 1962 so he could walk or bike to his job at the satellite company. Our page on postwar growth covers that era. Ford's ties to Palo Alto did not end there either. Its research lab, covered in our Ford Greenfield Labs profile, is in Stanford Research Park.

Space Systems/Loral, 1990 to 2012

In 1990 the defense electronics company Loral Corporation bought Ford Aerospace for $715 million. It renamed the satellite unit Space Systems/Loral, or SS/L. Under that name the Palo Alto plant became one of the world's leading builders of large commercial communications satellites. Its main competitors were Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Thales Alenia Space and Airbus.

The workhorse was the 1300 series platform, often called the 1300 bus. A bus is the body of a satellite: the structure, power, propulsion and controls that carry the customer's payload. Satellites built on it include Intelsat 40, Eutelsat 7C, SiriusXM 9 and Telstar 19V. The company also pioneered electric propulsion, lithium ion batteries and composite structures on commercial satellites, which let satellites carry heavier payloads and last longer.

SSL and Maxar

In 2012 the Canadian company MacDonald Dettwiler, later known as MDA, bought Space Systems/Loral for $875 million. By the end of that year the business was simply SSL. Notable work from the period includes:

• The propulsion system for NASA's LADEE moon mission, which ended in April 2014.
• AsiaSat 8 and AsiaSat 6, launched in August and September 2014.
• Batteries and power units for the International Space Station.

In 2017 MDA bought the imaging company DigitalGlobe and renamed the combined business Maxar Technologies. Maxar's head office moved to Westminster, Colorado, but satellite building stayed in Palo Alto. SSL became Maxar Space Solutions and then Maxar Space Systems. In 2019 it won NASA's contract for the power and propulsion element of the planned Gateway lunar station. It built the solar electric propulsion chassis for NASA's Psyche asteroid mission, launched on October 13, 2023. It also built six WorldView Legion imaging satellites, launched between May 2024 and February 2025. Intuitive Machines' annual report describes JUPITER 3, built for Hughes, as the largest commercial communications satellite built in the US.

Lanteris and Intuitive Machines

The private equity firm Advent International bought Maxar in 2023 and began running the satellite maker and the imaging business as separate companies. On October 1, 2025, Maxar Space Systems took a new name, Lanteris Space Systems. A month later, Intuitive Machines, a Houston company best known for its moon landers, agreed to buy it. The purchase agreement was signed November 3, 2025 and announced the next day.

Intuitive Machines completed the deal on January 13, 2026. Trade press put the price at $800 million before adjustments, split between $450 million in cash and $350 million in stock. The buyer's annual report says Lanteris added about 1,170 employees, mostly in California. Wikipedia's infobox gives a much larger figure of 2,900, so treat headcounts with caution. Chris Johnson stayed on as president of Lanteris.

Fabian Way and its neighbors

Fabian Way is a light industrial and office strip on the east side of town, a world away from downtown storefronts. Its best known former tenant besides the satellite maker was Sun Microsystems, whose old headquarters site on Fabian Way became the Taube Koret Campus for Jewish Life in 2009. Our Sun Microsystems profile covers that story.

Timeline

Palo Alto's satellite plant today

As of late 2026 the factory is part of Intuitive Machines. Trade press described the purchase as a step toward making the Houston company a space prime, a contractor that can build and run whole missions. The Palo Alto plant supplies the satellite building. We could not confirm current staffing at Fabian Way, so we do not give a local headcount.

For other companies that grew up in the city, see our companies guide and the famous tech addresses tour.

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