MDA Space announced Friday it will start building digital antennas for the first 66 satellites of IRIS², the European Union’s planned secure-communications constellation, under an initial agreement with Thales Alenia Space worth more than $100 million.
MDA signed an authorization to proceed, which lets them start work while the final contract is still being negotiated. The company says the definitive contract for its full scope of work is subject to finalization, and that it will add the agreement to its backlog in the fourth quarter.
Thales Alenia Space, the Franco-Italian company owned by Thales and Leonardo, signed on in September to supply the communications payloads for IRIS²’s first layer, while Airbus Defence and Space builds the satellites and installs the payloads. Both work for Eutelsat, which runs the low Earth orbit (LEO) part of the network for SpaceRISE, the group of European satellite operators the European Commission chose to build and run IRIS². MDA’s AURORA phased-array antennas, which steer their beams electronically rather than by moving a dish, will go into Thales Alenia Space’s payloads along with a controller.
MDA says it will design, build and test the antennas at its Montreal facility, ahead of the first layer’s launch in 2029. Chief executive Mike Greenley said the role reflects the confidence that “Thales Alenia Space and the European Commission have placed” in MDA.
The announcement came the same day Canada and the EU said at their summit in Montreal that they would start exploratory talks on cooperating on IRIS², through an arrangement for dialogue and information sharing.
MDA reports third-quarter results Nov. 5.