Lockheed Martin has begun preliminary construction on a new, $350 million facility about 15 minutes outside of Denver, CO. The new, 266,000-square-foot Gateway Center will begin producing next generation satellites at Lockheed's Waterton Canyon campus as soon as 2020.
The campus is one of the largest space technology centers in the country. Once the Gateway Center is completed, the campus will have more than 3.5 million square feet dedicated to research, engineering, testing, and office space.
The new Gateway Center will have a state-of-the-art, high bay clean room where workers can build both large and small satellites simultaneously. The paperless facility will also have reconfigurable production lines and advanced test capability.
An expansive thermal vacuum chamber will simulate space for testing satellites, and an anechoic chamber will be used to test sensors and communications systems. And it sounds like security is going to be tight, as it will be certified to security standards required to support national security missions.
In a statement, Rick Ambrose, executive vice president of Lockheed Martin Space Systems, called the facility Lockheed's "factory of the future."
About 1,500 contractors will work on the job over the next three-year years. Lockheed has added more than 750 jobs to its Colorado workforce since 2014, and currently has about 350 job openings in the Denver area alone.