Space mining will one day be a viable commercially supported business, but that’s down a long road. So for startup Canadian Space Mining Corporation, which has ambitions beyond space mining, a name change was due.
The company will keep the initials CSMC but they now stand for Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation which you will notice does not contain the word space anymore. Whereas they had an inflexible name before, they now have a lot of flexibility. The company now defines itself as “a Canadian space and defence company developing mission-critical technologies at the intersection of energy, resources, and sovereignty.”
CSMC now appears to be a holding company as they created two new corporations in May of this year to conduct separate business paths.
CSMC Nuclear Inc. will focus on dual-use LEUNR Micro-Reactor Technology they’ve been developing. The company was recently selected for the 2026 NATO DIANA accelerator. Aside from the potential use of this technology for the defence sector, the company has been developing the technology for use on the moon and in remote communities.
The technology is licensed from the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, and will be based on the Canadian-made SLOWPOKE research reactor. CSMC had previously been awarded a Canadian Space Agency Space Technology Development grant in 2023 for $1 million to pursue the technology.
The other company CSMC has created is CSMC Labs Inc. which the company says will “accelerate R&D in Dual-Use Systems, and Quantum Sensors.” Earlier this month the company won a contract for an undisclosed sum from the Luxembourg Space Agency for work on its Quantum Atomic Subsurface Mapper (QASM) sensor technology.
We reached out to CSMC to ask if the company if CSMC is now a holding company and Daniel Sax responded by saying “Yes and no. CSMC is still the corporate entity. Nuclear requires some very specific partitioning and guardrails, which is why we created a dedicated sub. Labs provides the same focus on our quantum work, as well as the legacy ISRU tech like aqualunar challenge.”
The company is looking to expand in 2026 and plans to fundraise. They also have a new streamilned website outlining its updated focus areas.