Canada’s MDA has traditionally taken the backseat in non-geostationary orbit (NGSO), supplying antennas and other satellite components as a subcontractor to smallsat megaconstellation specialists.
That changed after being carved out of Maxar Technologies in 2020 as an independent company.
The deal enabled MDA to invest in mass manufacturing capabilities and a new software-defined satellite that could be reprogrammed in orbit, putting it on course to become a constellation prime as the industry shifted in favor of builders with payload expertise.
MDA got its big break just two years later with a 2022 contract to build Globalstar’s third-generation low Earth orbit (LEO) network, bankrolled by Apple to help keep 1.5 billion active iPhone users connected to emergency services even when they can’t get a cell signal.
In August, Telesat became the first customer for MDA’s digital satellite product with a 2.1 billion Canadian dollar ($1.6 billion) contract to develop the Lightspeed LEO broadband constellation — MDA’s largest contract since its founding nearly 55 years ago as MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates.
Before the end of 2023, MDA announced it was also working with an unnamed customer looking to use the digital satellite design for an NGSO project shrouded in secrecy.
Alongside a business best known for the robotic space arms that helped assemble the International Space Station and the Radarsat imaging satellites it operates from geostationary orbit (GEO), MDA is busy upgrading production facilities in Montreal to build two satellites a day for its NGSO constellation future.
That’s faster than it needs to deliver 17 satellites for Globalstar, 198 for Telesat, and 36 for an unnamed GEO customer starting in 2025.
But at two a day, MDA Mike Greenley says the…
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