Thousands of software engineers, systems engineers and software developers work for some of the nation’s largest defense contractors in Colorado Springs to develop software used in satellite control. But no aerospace or defense contractor manufactures satellites locally.

That’s about to change, however.

Colorado Springs-based Spectrum Advanced Manufacturing formed a partnership late last year with D-Orbit USA, a Boulder-based unit of Italian space logistics company D-Orbit Group, to build small satellites. D-Orbit had earlier agreed to study the technology planned for dozens of satellites for Anuvu, a California provider of mobile entertainment and in-flight internet connections for airlines and other customers.

Bangalore, India-based Digantara announced plans in February, meanwhile, to spend $35 million in the next three years to open a satellite assembly, integration and testing plant in Colorado Springs that will employ 61 people. The company opened an office in the Catalyst Campus for Technology & Innovation in January with plans to eventually build a small manufacturing plant to produce small satellites for managing space traffic.

The Spectrum-D-Orbit partnership targets a fast-growing market that the companies believe will generate orders for thousands of satellites about the size of a washing machine during the next two to four years.(Spectrum and D-Orbit will be sharing a booth at this week’s Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.)

Spectrum officials say the company has potential customers that could need up to 3,000 satellites; that need could lead the company to more than triple its current manufacturing facilities to 100,000 square feet and expand its workforce to about 300. Spectrum now employs 72 people to make printed circuit boards, cables, wire harnesses and other electronic parts for the military, health care, industrial and commercial markets.

“Most of our growth has been in the space flight industry, and that is where our future growth will be,” Spectrum CEO Jeff Gilbert said.

Spectrum plans to convert an existing facility into a satellite manufacturing plant and begin production early next year of satellite buses, the primary structural part of the spacecraft that holds the payload, electronics and other equipment. The company received approval for $2.25 million in incentives from the state, county and city governments to add 100 jobs during the next eight years and complete the manufacturing facility.

The satellites D-Orbit and Spectrum hope to produce for Anuvu would travel in an elliptical orbit and thus can be smaller, lighter and less expensive to build than traditional satellites that travel in much higher geosynchronous orbit used by most spacecraft, said D-Orbit USA CEO Mike Cassidy. The first satellites produced in the agreement would be delivered next year and would be integrated with Anuvu’s network.

“The space industry is growing rapidly, and Colorado is kind of a boom town for space. We hope to be manufacturing hundreds of satellites during the next two to four years” under the partnership with Spectrum, Cassidy said.

Spectrum was started in 1997 and has produced printed circuit boards and other components for Psyche, NASA’s deep space exploration spacecraft launched in 2023; the space agency’s Mars Curiosity Rover; the Navy’s MK 48 heavyweight torpedo; and an augmented reality headset developed by Ocutrx Technologies, a medical device startup and Spectrum’s California-based parent company.

Digantara, meanwhile, is developing a network of up to 15 small “cube” satellites during the next three years that it will use to manage growing orbital traffic and avoid collisions among the more than 1 million objects in space. The company wants to build “a Google Maps for space” with its small satellites, which cost about $2 million each to manufacture, compared with $30 million for traditional, large satellites.

Digantara officials said the company eventually plans to build a small manufacturing plant in the Springs or lease space it will renovate and later expand to match the size of its 100,000-square-foot plant in Bangalore. Company officials did not respond to an email seeking an update on Digantara’s local expansion plans, but the company lists an opening for an astrodynamics engineer in Colorado Springs on its website.