Sourcing Structures, Harnesses, Cleaning and Test Time for Satellite Builders

What satellite teams typically buy from outside shops

A spacecraft program builds its core in house and buys a long tail of parts and services. The outside work usually looks like this:

• Precision structures. Machined aluminum and titanium panels, frames, bus structure parts, payload and instrument mounts, and adapter rings.
• Brackets and small machined parts. Component brackets, harness tie down brackets, standoffs, thermal hardware mounts, and many small parts with tight flatness and hole position callouts.
• Cable and wire harnesses. Flight harnesses, engineering development unit harnesses, and test and GSE cables, each built to a different level of rigor.
• Cleaning and packaging. Precision cleaning of machined parts, then bagging and labeling so parts arrive ready to enter a cleanroom.
• Environmental test time. Vibration, shock, acoustic and thermal vacuum testing, often bought as overflow when an in-house chamber is booked or down.

Quantities range from one-off engineering units to constellation volumes, and the same bracket may be bought in prototype, qualification and production lots with different paperwork at each stage. Say which stage you are buying for. It changes what the supplier has to deliver.

Satellite work on the Space Coast today

The Space Coast is best known for launch, but spacecraft are also built and processed here. Two examples that public reporting confirms as active in 2026:

• Argotec in Melbourne. The Italian company opened its first US satellite production facility in Melbourne on April 2, 2026, according to the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast. The EDC describes modular clean rooms and parallel integration lines, capacity to assemble and integrate up to 10 of Argotec's HEO satellites at once, and current work that includes seven HEO satellites for the IRIDE Earth observation constellation.
• Amazon Leo at Kennedy Space Center. Amazon builds its Leo broadband satellites in Kirkland, Washington, and prepares them for launch at a 100,000 square foot payload processing facility at Kennedy. Amazon describes technicians there charging and health checking each satellite, loading krypton propellant, mounting satellites on a dispenser and enclosing them in the rocket fairing.

Add the launch cadence, with Space Launch Delta 45 reporting 109 orbital launches from the Eastern Range in 2025, and there is steady local demand for handling fixtures, shipping containers, cleaned hardware, quick turn brackets and test capacity around payload processing.

These companies are named to describe the market only. None of them is a Aerospace Sourcing customer or partner. Several other spacecraft projects have been announced in Brevard County over the years; we have left out any whose current production status we could not confirm.

Precision structures and brackets: what to specify

Most problems with machined spacecraft parts come from requirements that lived in someone's head instead of on the drawing or PO. Spell these out:

• Material and condition, including the specification and temper, and whether material certs must show heat or lot traceability back to the mill.
• Stress relief and distortion control for thin walled or highly pocketed parts, where flatness after machining is often the hardest feature to hold.
• Finish, such as chemical conversion coating or anodize, with the specification, type and class. On spacecraft the finish can also be a thermal or electrical requirement, not just corrosion protection.
• Inserts and fasteners, including installation method and any locking feature requirements.
• Inspection, whether a full first article inspection to AS9102 is required, and which features need a measured report rather than a sample check.
• Nonmetallic materials. Adhesives, potting, tapes, lubricants and paints can outgas in vacuum. ASTM E595 is the common screening test. It reports total mass loss and collected volatile condensable material, and historically 1.0 percent and 0.10 percent have been used as rejection screening levels, although the standard leaves acceptance criteria to the user. NASA Goddard publishes an outgassing database of tested materials.

For machining cost drivers, see our aerospace machining cost guide, and for the full service, the aerospace CNC machining page.

Cable and wire harnesses

Harness requirements for space hardware are written as a base standard plus a space addendum, and the purchase order has to say both.

• IPC/WHMA-A-620 covers requirements and acceptance for cable and wire harness assemblies. Its space and military addendum, A-620E-S for Revision E, adds requirements for harnesses that must survive vibration and thermal cycling. IPC states that the addendum cannot be used by itself; it must be used with the base standard.
• IPC J-STD-001 covers soldered electrical and electronic assemblies, and its space and military addendum, J-STD-001JS for Revision J, supplements or replaces specific base requirements.

Also tell the shop whether the harness is flight, engineering development or ground test hardware. A test cable built to flight rules costs more than it needs to; a flight harness built to commercial class rules is a quality escape. Specify the electrical test you need, such as continuity, insulation resistance and dielectric withstanding voltage, and ask for a test report tied to the serial number.

Contamination control, cleaning and packaging

Satellite builders expect parts to arrive clean and to stay clean until they are opened inside a controlled area. The customer's contamination control plan usually drives the requirement, and suppliers need it flowed down in plain terms.

• Cleanroom class. ISO 14644-1 classifies cleanrooms by airborne particle concentration. ISO Class 7 allows up to 352,000 particles per cubic meter at 0.5 micrometers and larger, and ISO Class 8 allows up to 3,520,000. If a supplier must assemble or package in a cleanroom, state the class.
• Surface cleanliness. IEST-STD-CC1246 defines product cleanliness levels for particles and nonvolatile residue. A level on the PO gives the cleaning shop a target and gives you a number to check against the verification report.
• Packaging. Say whether you need double bagging, cleanroom compatible bag material, ESD protection for electronics, desiccant, caps on threaded holes, and what goes on the label. Packaging is the step most often left to the supplier's judgment, and it is where clean parts get dirty.

If parts are cleaned by one shop and machined by another, the handoff needs an owner. When we place a job that involves both, the cleaning and packaging requirements go into both suppliers' flow-downs, and we check the cleanliness report before the parts ship.

Environmental test time

When an in-house chamber is booked, a program often needs outside test capacity on short notice. The test plan cites the standard, and the outside lab has to run it as written.

• GSFC-STD-7000, the General Environmental Verification Standard (GEVS), is NASA Goddard's baseline for environmental verification of payloads, subsystems and components, including vibration, acoustic, shock and thermal vacuum testing. Revision B is current, and many commercial builders use GEVS levels as a reference.
• Launch vehicle user guides define the vibration, shock and acoustic environments a payload must be qualified against for a specific rocket.

Before booking, confirm the lab's shaker force rating and fixture interface, chamber size and vacuum level, cleanliness of the test area, whether staff on the job are US persons, and whether the lab's accreditation scope covers the method. Our space test lab time page explains how we match test requests to available capacity.

Paperwork and export control

Spacecraft customers and their mission assurance teams review supplier data closely. A typical delivery package for flight hardware includes:

• A certificate of conformance. Every Aerospace Sourcing order ships with one.
• Material certs with traceability to heat or lot.
• Special process certs that name the specification, type, class and revision.
• An AS9102 first article report when required. See our FAI guide for buyers.
• Cleanliness verification and, for harnesses, electrical test reports.
• Outgassing data or approval references for nonmetallic materials.

On export control, satellites are not all treated the same. Since November 10, 2014, most commercial communications satellites, some remote sensing satellites, and many related parts and components have been controlled under the EAR in ECCN 9A515 and related entries, while spacecraft with military functions, sophisticated sensors and most crewed spacecraft remained on the US Munitions List in Category XV. The design owner makes that call. The supplier just needs the answer before it receives the data.

The real constraints: integration dates, export rules and escapes

Schedule. A late bracket can hold up an integration sequence, and a missed integration date can threaten a launch slot that is hard to replace. Buy long lead material early, and be realistic about how long cleaning, finishing and inspection add after machining.

Export control. Even EAR controlled spacecraft data can require a license to share with foreign persons. Send controlled data only to suppliers set up to protect it. Our confidentiality page explains how we move it.

Quality escapes. The common ones are an outgassing material swapped without approval, a part machined to a superseded revision, a finish cert missing its class, and a clean part shipped in the wrong bag. Each can cost more in rework, retest or schedule than the part itself.

How a sourcing partner helps without getting in the way

Aerospace Sourcing, takes a request, matches it to qualified suppliers, flows down your requirements including FAI, material traceability, special processes, cleaning and packaging, tracks the job, and checks the paperwork before delivery. When a part needs a machinist, a finisher and a cleaner, you still get one quote, one lead time, one point of contact and one purchase order.

We do not run machines, we do not replace your mission assurance review or receiving inspection, and we cannot promise a supplier for every request or a specific lead time before a supplier has quoted. Suppliers sign a flow-down NDA before seeing your files and do not learn your identity unless you approve. Related pages: launch providers and defense contractors.

Request a quote for spacecraft parts

If you need structures, brackets or other machined spacecraft parts, start with the CNC machining quote form and include the drawing revision, material, finish, cleanliness level, packaging and paperwork requirements. For harnesses or test time, the same form lets you pick a different service. A person will reply within one business day.

Questions

Related

• Aerospace CNC Machining for Space and Defense Buyers
• Booking Environmental Test Lab Time for Space and Defense Hardware
• Sourcing GSE, Pad Hardware and Fluid System Parts for Launch Providers

Sources

• EDC of Florida's Space Coast: Argotec opens first US production facility (Apr. 2, 2026)
• Amazon: Florida satellite processing facility for Amazon Leo (Project Kuiper)
• DVIDS: Space Launch Delta 45 reactivates the 1st Space Launch Squadron (109 orbital launches in 2025)
• NASA Goddard: Outgassing database user guide (ASTM E595 screening levels)
• ASTM E595 test method listing
• IPC: IPC/WHMA-A-620 Space and Military Addendum task group
• IPC Validation Services: J-STD-001 Space/Military Addendum
• ISO 14644-1:2015 cleanroom classification
• IEST-STD-CC1246 product cleanliness levels
• NASA Goddard: GSFC-STD-7000 General Environmental Verification Standard
• Federal Register: Satellite and spacecraft export control rule creating ECCN 9A515 (May 13, 2014)
• Wiley: State and Commerce reform export controls for satellites and spacecraft