Business

On December 26, 2019 John Spencer MacDonald passed away at the age of 83. He will be remembered in part as the co-founder of Canada’s best known space company, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates, known as MDA.

Fifty years after MDA was founded as a private company it will be reverting back to being private, and not for the first time.

Satellite data aggregator and solution provider SkyWatch today announced it had closed a Series A round of funding raising $10 million (US$7.5M). The company also unveiled its latest product offering, TerraStream.

The rumour had been floating for six months, so now that its happened, it shouldn’t come as shock that MDA has been sold, right?

This weeks SpaceQ podcast is a live recording from the Canadian Space Summit. The speaker is Rob Postma, Vice President and Head of Governmental Export, Space Systems, Airbus.

This past summer SpaceQ wrote about the successful graduates of the first cohort for the Creative Destruction Lab’s (CDL) new Space Stream. While some companies were more satisfied with the process than others, all the companies interviewed believed that they were better off for the CDL process, and that the process had helped make them business-ready.

The Canadian Space Agency has awarded three contracts, two to Magellan Aerospace and one to MDA, for the purpose of making sure the RADARSAT Constellation Mission remains in tip-top shape.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) recently announced four Space Technology Development Program (STDP) opportunities but postponed its Suborbital Capability Demonstration to a later date.

This weeks SpaceQ podcast is a live recording from the Canadian Space Summit. The opening keynote speaker for the conference was Sergy Mummert, Senior Vice President, Global Cloud & Strategic Partnerships, SES Networks.

Issues raised several years ago were again the focus during a consultation with stakeholders by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) and the Canadian Space Agency.