As first covered by Space News, a recent GAO report documented delays the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency (SDA) faces in building out its satellite constellation due to supply shortages. Mynaric’s (M0YN) production issues related to their Condor Mk3 optical intersatellite link (OISL) are well known, announced a year ago in summer 2024. Manufacturing pitfalls led to delayed revenue and customer payments, a drop in Mynaric’s stock price, and ultimately to their insolvency. The GAO does not mention Mynaric by name in the report, but conclusions about Mynaric’s production woes are inferable by provided data.
As background, after Mynaric’s collapse, Rocket Lab in March announced plans to acquire Mynaric. Afterward, when asked about Mynaric’s struggles during Rocket Lab’s next earnings call, CEO Peter Beck faced this head-on, responding, “But the biggest issue there […] is just production. And that’s an area that obviously we’re very, very strong in. So as we look at them as a company, they’ve got a great product, there’s been a tremendous amount of capital invested in the business to scale, but there’s just a few fundamentals there that we really feel we can jump in and fix.” Rocket Lab clearly exudes confidence they can fix Mynaric’s manufacturing and tap into their ~$150 million backlog.
Now back to the new GAO report. Regarding supply chain issues related to optical intersatellite links, Mynaric’s main product, the GAO found: “T1TL requires more than 500 optical communications terminals for the constellation’s 126 satellites. However, officials reported that in January 2025, the program had received 20 terminals.” As noted, the GAO does not call out Mynaric by name. But Mynaric executed sales to provide Condor Mk3 OISLs to three SDA Tranche 1 satellite contractors, including for 42 satellites manufactured by Northrop Grumman for the Tranche 1 Transport Layer mentioned above. Mynaric’s contract with Northrop Grumman concluded in March 2022, and they were to supply Condor Mk3s in 2023 and 2024. The Tranche 1 Transport Layer spec called for 4 OISLs per satellite, thus Mynaric was to deliver to Northrop Grumman 168 Condor Mk3s by 2024’s end.
Per the GAO report, SDA Tranche 1 Tracking Layer contractors received only 20 total OISLs through January of 2025. Even assuming all these are from Mynaric to Northrop Grumman, Mynaric is at best 148 units late and behind. Rocket Lab plainly has much to fix to get Mynaric on track.
If any counterpoint may be drawn, it is that Mynaric is not alone facing this issue. For Tranche 1 transporter satellites, Lockheed Martin bought 168 OISLs for 42 satellites from CACI and Tesat. York sourced OISLs for its 42-satellite contract from Skyloom. These all are also apparently late. Skyloom, however, announced a delivery of OISLs to York in March of this year.