WASHINGTON — MDA Space will build a radar imaging satellite for the Canadian Space Agency as the government studies options for a next-generation satellite system.
MDA Space announced June 24 it received a contract from the Canadian Space Agency worth 688 million Canadian dollars ($483.3 million) to build a replenishment spacecraft for the Radarsat Constellation Mission, or RCM. The company received an initial award of 44.7 million Canadian dollars last December to procure long-lead items for the spacecraft.
RCM is a set of three synthetic-aperture radar, or SAR, imaging satellites built by MDA for the Canadian government and launched in 2019. Neither MDA nor the Canadian Space Agency announced a planned launch date for the replenishment satellite.
The new satellite is based on the design the company developed for MDA Chorus, a commercial SAR system. MDA is building one satellite for Chorus equipped with a C-band radar, while Iceye is supplying a separate satellite with an X-band radar. The satellites are expected to launch late this year on a Falcon 9.
The RCM replenishment satellite is part of Radarsat+, a program the Canadian government announced in 2023. With a total cost of about 1 billion Canadian dollars, Radarsat+ includes both the RCM replenishment satellite and design studies for a next-generation system.
Last December, at the same time as funding initial work on the RCM replenishment satellite, the Canadian Space Agency provided three study contracts for the space segment of the next-generation system. Each contract, awarded to C-CORE, Kepler and MDA Space, is worth about 750,000 Canadian dollars.
The agency followed up those study contracts June 11 with similar awards to Calian, Kepler and MDA for the ground segment of that system. Each contract is worth about 800,000 Canadian dollars.
“These investments support a next-generation satellite system that reinforces Canada’s space sector as a sovereign capability and reflects our broader efforts to strengthen Canada’s defense industrial capacity, while driving innovation across our space sector,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s industry minister, said in a statement about the ground segment study contracts.
