Beyond Gravity (Zurich, Switzerland) has expanded its satellite dispenser manufacturing site in Linköping, Sweden, adding a production hall equipped with a new high-precision milling machine for carbon fiber and aluminum dispenser structures. Beginning in October 2026, the site will be able to produce 192 dispenser modules per year — double its current capacity of 96 — with Amazon Leo as its largest customer.
Dispensers hold satellites in place during launch and release them into orbit in a defined sequence. As constellations shift satellite production from one-off builds to hundreds of near-identical units launched dozens at a time, Beyond Gravity notes, the dispenser itself has become a series product. The expanded site’s 192-module annual capacity corresponds to approximately 48 flights, depending on configuration.
The new hall sits adjacent to a production building Beyond Gravity inaugurated in 2024 for serial production, and increases the Linköping facility’s production area from 12,600 square meters to approximately 15,000 square meters. The milling machine processes carbon fiber and aluminum to tight tolerances and drills the precise holes used for bolts and other assemblies in the dispenser. The Linköping site currently employs 350 people.
In 2022, Amazon (Seattle, Wash., U.S.) awarded Beyond Gravity the largest contract in the company’s history to design and manufacture custom, scalable dispenser systems for Amazon Leo, a low-Earth orbit (LEO) broadband network with an initial constellation of more than 3,000 satellites. Beyond Gravity reports that it has been the program’s exclusive dispenser provider since then; all 396 Amazon Leo satellites deployed to date have used dispensers from Linköping. Those dispensers fly across Amazon Leo’s full launch lineup, which includes vehicles from Arianespace (Évry-Courcouronnes, France), United Launch Alliance (ULA, Centennial, Colo., U.S.), Blue Origin (Kent, Wash., U.S.) and SpaceX (Starbase, Texas, U.S.). The expansion, the company says, is intended to keep dispenser supply in pace with Amazon Leo’s deployment schedule — which Beyond Gravity describes as the third-largest satellite constellation in operation — and to create room for additional constellation customers.
“As we accelerate the deployment of our Amazon Leo constellation, reliable and scalable dispenser systems are critical to maintaining our launch cadence,” says Melissa Wuerl, director of launch systems at Amazon Leo. “… We’ve also been working to increase the number of satellites each dispenser can carry, so we’re deploying more per mission than when we started.”
In total, Beyond Gravity’s dispenser and separation systems have released approximately 1,700 satellites into orbit, for programs including the Galileo navigation constellation, the TerraBella and Canadian Radarsat Earth observation constellations and the Eutelsat OneWeb internet constellation.
Dispensers from Beyond Gravity’s site in Linköping. Source | Beyond Gravity
