We’re writing from our new digs! Spaceflight has moved to a new location that accommodates both our business offices and our integration facilities, and more than DOUBLES our footprint. 

It was a long search for a place that could offer both needs. (Prior to this, we had our integration facility in Auburn, WA which is about 20 miles from our old offices in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood). This new facility is especially exciting as many of us spent much of the pandemic working remotely. Our integration team, of course, was always masking up and working on site! The whole team is finally under one roof in Bellevue, WA, and it’s been fantastic to see familiar (and so many new) faces. 

Some photos from the move:

Our new sign arrived! Our team came out (missing a few folks) for a photo by the new sign. 

Moving our overhead crane from Auburn was quite a process, involving multiple oversize load trucks to transport the disassembled crane. There was more specialized equipment necessary to lift it into place. Yes, there are cranes just to move cranes.

We have a huge new production space!

We’re ready to receive spacecraft. A rolling door leads to the new clean room.

Here are some of the significant details:

• Total new space is just under 39,000 square feet. There is 25,000 square feet of office space (more than DOUBLE our old space!). The warehouse is 14,000 square feet, including a 2,000 square foot cleanroom. By comparison, our former warehouse space was 6,800 sq ft with a 1000 sq ft cleanroom. 
• The new clean room is an ISO 8 level facility. We can process 4 – 5 Sherpa OTVs at once with anywhere from 4 – 20 satellites assigned per Sherpa. In our old space, we could only process two Sherpa OTVs at a time.
• Our receiving area includes a dedicated receiving cleanspace (separate from the cleanroom). 
• The new storage space means we can keep a larger inventory stocked. There is also dedicated large crate storage to hold our shipping containers for spacecraft.
• We have a new dedicated environmental testing room and a new dedicated non-flight flatsat area.
• Customers rejoice: we have dedicated controlled access office space available for those customers who are onsite, processing in our facilities. It includes four conference rooms to allow our customers to have private working space.
• Facility has convenient access from two major highways (I-90 and I-405), making it easy to access from SeaTac International Airport.
• We’re growing! The current office space will allow room for our total number of employees to double. You’ve heard we’re hiring, right?
• There is a new controlled access mission control room for communicating with our spacecraft on orbit. 

We’re still putting the finishing touches on the space – thank goodness the Starbucks espresso machine just arrived. Boxes are getting unpacked and pictures are going up. It’s looking pretty good, if we do say so ourselves. (Employees are on the fence about our retro black toilets, but agree that more room for the Spaceflight-branded cornhole is always good.) We’ll share more photos as we put the final shine on the place – rumor has it an open house event is in order!

Spaceflight has grown so much over the last ten plus years, and we’re ready for more. This new facility will take us forward into the next ten years and beyond. We’re looking forward to sharing more photos and videos from the new place as we start to move the first spacecraft through. Onward and upward!