TAMPA, Fla. — The Canadian House Company (CSA) has awarded MDA House a contract extension value round $182 million to proceed supporting robotics operations on the Worldwide House Station till 2030.
The contract now additionally consists of robotics flight controller duties, along with the operational readiness assist MDA House has offered for the Cellular Servicing System on the ISS since 2001.
MDA House has beforehand solely offered coaching to CSA and NASA workers for working this method, which incorporates the house station’s 17-meter Canadarm2 robotic arm, alongside mission planning and engineering assist.
The overwhelming majority of ISS robotic operations are carried out by flight controllers on the bottom, supporting the berthing of visiting spacecraft, relocation and restore of apparatus across the station, monitoring and surveying the station for injury, and aiding astronauts throughout spacewalks.
From January 2025, MDA House will management the robotic operations with a crew that may initially be based mostly on the CSA mission management centre in Quebec, Canada.
Business push
Flight controller assist can also be a part of a brand new product line of modular robotic applied sciences and providers MDA House unveiled April 10 referred to as Skymaker, which the corporate hopes will assist it safe rising business alternatives following a long time of presidency work.
The corporate is providing to function Skymaker expertise on behalf of shoppers from its just lately opened mission management heart in Ontario, Canada.
“There’s no want for them to develop into specialists on house robotics and operations,” MDA House vice chairman of robotics and house operations Holly Johnson mentioned in an interview, and “attempt to undergo all that scar tissue studying that we had over the previous couple of minutes.
“We’re going to bundle that up right into a full end-to-end mission providers and operations providing.”
Skymaker contains a equipment of elements for robotic arms starting from one to greater than 15 meters in size.
The corporate is seeing an uptick in demand for house robotics within the business market, in accordance with Johnson.
Final 12 months, MDA House secured contracts to construct the grapple fixtures and anchor level interfaces that Axiom’s proposed business house station must be suitable with robotics.
The corporate can also be offering robotics for one of many business groups NASA just lately picked to work on ideas for a lunar rover that might be supplied as a service.
“We’re in discussions with a number of prospects which have curiosity in on-orbit servicing, in-space meeting, and in-space manufacturing,” Johnson informed SpaceNews.
MDA House has traditionally been identified for delivering large-scale and bespoke high-performance robotic techniques, corresponding to Canadarm2.
However Johnson mentioned Skymaker addresses demand for a better number of wants with robotics protecting completely different lengths and strengths.
“We will attain across the nook or stroll across the station,” she added, “and our robotics could be one meter lengthy to greater than 15 meters lengthy.”
“Some robotics require dexterous dealing with, others require crane-like operations, and so with our scalable answer we’re telling our prospects: Allow us to do the heavy or the sunshine lifting.”
Based on Johnson, Skymaker is principally suited to spacecraft which are a minimum of the scale of a dishwasher.
Authorities backing
MDA House can also be presently creating a robotic arm system for the United States-led Gateway house station being deliberate to orbit the Moon, representing Canada’s contribution to this system.
Information of Canada’s ISS robotics extension comes a day after the nation’s authorities proposed the creation of a Nationwide House Council, a part of a “new whole-of-government method to house exploration, expertise improvement, and analysis.”
The council was introduced as a part of Canada’s 2024 price range request, which included round $6 million in 2024-25 to Canada’s house company for the Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP), which invests in science and expertise actions in lunar orbit, on the Moon’s floor, and past.
The Skymaker announcement can also be a part of a broader transformation for MDA House, a robotics, satellite tv for pc techniques, and geointelligence supplier that listed on the Toronto Inventory Trade after being carved out of Maxar Applied sciences in 2020.
The corporate was based almost 55 years in the past as MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates.
The corporate rebranded as MDA House March 7, and some weeks later named its software-defined satellite tv for pc product line Aurora.
Canadian geostationary operator Telesat, Aurora’s anchor buyer, has ordered an preliminary 198 of the satellites for its low Earth orbit broadband community Lightspeed beneath a contract value about $1.6 billion. SpaceX is because of begin launching the satellites in 2026.
Since separating from Maxar and turning into a public firm 4 years in the past, Johnson mentioned MDA House has been “capable of make investments closely within the subsequent era of merchandise, in roadmaps, and applied sciences” throughout all its enterprise areas.
The corporate’s house robotics rivals embody Maxar, U.S.-based Redwire, and GITAI of Japan.
