MDA is looking ahead to commercial space opportunities as it reported strong results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022.
Among its previously announced contracts, the Canadarm robotics maker highlighted an agreement to sell associated technology to Axiom Space, which just launched a Canadian to space last month. MDA also discussed the impact that ongoing adjustments to Telesat’s Lightspeed broadband constellation will have on its business, and its activities in Ukraine.
MDA’s backlog for Q1 was up 122 percent compared with last year, in large part due to previously announced contracts: a low-Earth orbit (LEO) Globalstar constellation award worth $415 million, and Phase B ($269 million) of the Canadarm3 robotic arm tasked to perform work on NASA’s planned Gateway lunar space station, on behalf of the Canadian Space Agency.
Revenues stayed consistent at $128.4 million (up 4% from last year) and EBITDA increased to $35.6 million (up from $29.5 million last year), the results indicated. MDA, however, emphasized that the quarterly results are part of a strong set of space contracts in which it is embedded and that further opportunities are on the horizon.
One among them is Axiom Space, which aims to launch a series of International Space Station missions in the coming years to perform commercial research on the orbiting complex. Axiom 1 included Canadian investor Mark Pathy, performing medical and technology research in orbit, and further missions (Axiom 2 and Axiom 3) are already on the manifest.
MDA previously announced its first commercial sale of Canadarm3 technology to Axiom Space, which will see MDA deliver 32 external robotic interfaces for Axiom’s future planned space station.
“The technology includes commercial variants of Canadarm interfaces designed for the Artemis Gateway, as well as those that allow the existing Canadarm2 on the International Space Station to build and assemble the new Axiom station,” MDA CEO Mike Greenley told investors during a conference call Wednesday (May 11).
“This is an exciting development for MDA,” he continued. “This signifies a major shift in the commercial landscape for robotics, as more non-government entities look to establish a foothold and hub in low-Earth orbit for a variety of activities, including in-space manufacturing, human spaceflight missions to LEO, and deep space exploration.”
Later in the call, Greenley said that NASA’s financial support of commercial space stations has created an “expectation in the market” that these are viable future opportunities, with at least four systems in development. The White House, he noted, also released a white paper in April expressing the importance of the in-orbit service assembly and manufacturing market. MDA’s long history of robotics would be useful on this front for “servicing, and assembly, and manufacturing,” he said.
In other robotic-themed plans, MDA is also looking ahead to active debris removal systems for inactive satellites in low-Earth orbit – which would also require robotics – along with robotic construction for the Artemis program and other activities on the lunar surface.
The Moon work received some support from a recent announcement at the 37th Space Symposium in April, Greenley added, where MDA announced they will work with Lockheed Martin and General Motors to put “robotic solutions” on lunar mobility vehicles.
MDA also announced a new global headquarters and space robotics centre of excellence in Q1, to support these and other projects in robotics.
On the satellite business side, MDA is keeping an eye on a recent announcement by fellow Canadian company Telesat. Telesat has been grappling with supply chain issues for manufacturing its Lightspeed constellation – along with inflation, like most of the rest of the space industry. With these challenges forthcoming, Telesat decided to reduce its constellation to 198 satellites (from 298), which should still well encompass market demand for its service.
MDA’s forecasted role in Lightspeed is to provide a phased array (a direct radiating array), which MDA previously described as an “electronically-steered multi-beam antenna that will provide unlimited coverage flexibility and agility through advanced beam-forming technology.”
Greenley said MDA is in a position to “quickly ramp up work” on its contribution when requested, and is in active discussions with the managers of Telesat. “Based on current negotiations, [we] still expect a contract award in the first half of the year,” Greenley added.
When asked whether the rescoping of the Teleseat project would affect MDA, Greenley said the economics will remain the same, but profiling of the project may be affected. Expectations should be met in fiscal year 2022, while future years will be “based on the overall program profile in the face of things, so that that may get tweaked a little bit as we go through the final contract setup.”
On the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) side, another longstanding technology of MDA, Greenley spoke of the help that satellites provided in giving real-time, on-the-ground information to assist Ukrainians amid an invasion by Russia that started on Feb. 24. Companies and space agencies around the world have united in stopping numerous partnerships in Russia and implementing other sanctions on that country, although ISS operations are continuing as usual.
“The tragic developments in Ukraine have shone a spotlight on the role that commercial EO [Earth observation] satellites can play in providing near real-time data and analytics to governments and commercial players,” Greenley said.
He spoke of MDA’s special authorization from the Canadian government to use SAR to look at Ukraine, which is especially useful given these wavelengths can penetrate cloud cover. MDA’s imagery has been “merged and analyzed with other sources of imagery from commercial Earth observation companies to develop comprehensive, near real-time intelligence reports for Ukrainian governmental officials,” Greenley said.
Aside from these individual contract opportunities, MDA is also forecasting strong growth in the space industry overall.
NASA’s $26 billion USD ($33 billion CAD) budget request is an eight percent increase of their approved spending level for the last fiscal year, “signaling the importance of civil space to the current administration and to the strategic future of the United States,” Greenley said. While the request must be approved by Congress, NASA has said this is the largest overall request in current dollars for the agency, with the largest overall share for science funding.
The Space Development Agency in the U.S. awarded three contracts to build 126 satellites to launch in 2024, as part of a $1.8 billion USD ($2.3 billion CAD) Department of Defense contract “for missile warning, communications, data coverage and sharing and other capabilities,” Greenley said. He noted the current “geopolitical tensions” are driving demand in defence and military budgets for space, including space-based surveillance and detection systems.
This interest is coming north of the border, too. Canada is also looking to establish a new space division in its military in the coming year, Greenley reminded his listeners, “and looks for effective ways to leverage commercial capabilities and the expanding role of the commercial space sector in space.” MDA, he added, has a “very supportive government agency” through the Export Development Bank of Canada, which assists in financing space activities.
Additionally, yesterday (May 10) NASA announced its 19th signatory to the Artemis Accords – Colombia – following pacts with countries including Canada. This signing is among many signals to MDA indicating ongoing growth and interest in the space sector, Greenley said.