November 28, 2025 Update: YAM-9 was deployed via SpaceX’s Transporter-15 mission on November 28, 2025 at 10:44 AM PT. Loft has successfully made contact with the satellite and commissioning is underway. All systems appear nominal.
It’s yet another launch for “Yet Another Mission.” Loft Orbital’s YAM-9 satellite is fully integrated and ready to fly on SpaceX’s Transporter-15 mission on November 20. YAM-9 will advance Loft’s growing space infrastructure, enabling customers to deploy missions rapidly without building their own satellites.
Missions-as-a-Service: Multi-Customer Access on a Single Platform
YAM-9 is a rideshare program, supporting several customer payloads including Wyvern’s Dragonette-005 hyperspectral camera. We are able to fly multiple payloads at once using the Hub, Loft’s universal payload adapter. This hardware abstraction layer enables customers to plug in payloads without bus-level customization or non-recurring engineering.
Once payloads were delivered, Loft completed test and in-house integration in less than four months significantly reducing customers’ time to achieving their mission outcomes.
Virtual Missions: Run Applications in Space, No Hardware Development Required
YAM-9 also marks a key milestone for Virtual Missions, Loft’s advanced edge-compute capabilities that allows customers to run and iterate AI models directly on orbit.
Through Virtual Missions, analytics teams and developers can:
- Deploy and update algorithms in real time using Loft’s on-orbit compute resources
- Access existing sensors and data streams from active Loft satellites
- Validate insights and scale commercial applications without having to manage any hardware
This program will also demonstrate next-generation processing capabilities through which space-enabled innovation can be launched and iterated as quickly as software upgrades.
Next-Generation Processing: Building the Compute Layer for AI in Space
YAM-9 is also the first commercial satellite of its kind to fly a demonstration of four networked compute units, creating a heterogeneous processing environment that scales with on-orbit demand and mission complexity. This multi-node configuration called Hub Compute forms the backbone of Loft’s compute architecture and secure processing environment. Each unit is integrated into an on-orbit network, allowing multiple AI applications to run simultaneously.
These compute units are set to launch next year on the YAC-4 constellation, the first AI-enabled Earth observation platform with multi-sensor data collection capabilities and on-board processing. With YAM-9, we will be demonstrating these capabilities and benchmarking performance across multiple architectures, validating how future Loft constellations can handle diverse AI workloads across a variety of Earth applications.
Launching Art to Orbit
In celebration of Loft’s French culture, YAM-9 is also carrying a unique piece of artwork designed by Olivier Vatine, long-time space enthusiast and renowned comic artist known for Aquablue and Star Wars. He has been illustrating for more than 40 years, and several pieces of his work hang in our Toulouse, France office today.
Fast-Track to Orbit: Reduced Complexity, Accelerated Deployment
Loft handles launch vehicle licensing, integration, and mission operations to remove the barriers that historically make space missions lengthy and complex.
Key Stats:
- Launch provider: SpaceX Transporter-15
- Average time from payload delivery to integration: 6 months
- Launch cadence: Fourth consecutive launch on a SpaceX Transporter mission
- Future launch availability: Manifested through 2027
Building the Future of Space Infrastructure
YAM-9 is another step toward Loft’s vision of a global, AI-enabled orbital infrastructure where customers can operate missions, process data, and run applications in space as easily as they do in the cloud.
Fly your mission with Loft.
