Mike Greenley

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022

Space Remains a Very Strong Economic Growth Multiplier

BY MIKE GREENLEY

CEO, MDA

There’s a palpable excitement about Space these days. A sense that big things are happening. This is driven in part by awareness of the enormous impact that satellite technologies have on our lives — activity in Space is bringing access to communications to people no matter where they live; Earth Observation (EO) is allowing us to monitor all kinds of variables around the world and detect changes bringing new insights to decision-makers in multiple sectors. In part it stems from a growing understanding of the economic impact of Space: high-quality jobs, strong supply chains, strong economic benefits with very strong economic growth multipliers, and new business opportunities in areas like Space-based manufacturing or Space-mining. Then there’s the fact that some big names have ventures in Space that are making headlines. And of course, Space is just cool.

Space industry outlook In fact, we are on the cusp of a New Space age, driven in large part by accessibility. The cost of launch has gone down year over year, for a number of years now. If we go back to the 1990s or the early 2000s, the cost of launch might have been USD 18,000 per kg to get something into Space, compared to the current cost of slightly less than USD 2,000 per kg. And the launch community suggests that maybe, in time, it can come down another 10x to under USD 200 per kg. It is a game changer. In the first decades that Canada was in Space, there were just a few Space-faring nations, now there are 90, and thousands of commercial companies.

So, it’s no wonder that invested capital in Space has doubled every year for the last four — even through the pandemic. The global Space economy is now worth USD 450 billion a year, and by the 2030s is forecast to reach more than USD 1.5 trillion. For perspective, that is roughly the size of the current GDP of my country, Canada.

Now, with multiple countries and companies participating in this domain, as Space becomes more congested and competitive, we will need to be more organized about how we all operate together and how we take care of the resources that we already have in Space, just as we do with our skies and seas on Earth.

Value of Earth Observation The evolution of satellite technology is stunning... and accelerating. In the constellation era, companies with bold vision and a mission-critical mindset are opening the aperture wider to reach more of

Interest in advanced Space-based technology will continue to accelerate. MDA is leaning in. And we aren’t the only ones. There are already thousands of companies operating in this Space. Hundreds of new ones are coming onstream every year, bringing innovation and opportunities. Proven companies, that have been around for decades, are creating collaborations with next generation Space companies to offer new capabilities to the market. It’s an exciting time. A time of opportunity. A time for discoveries.

LEADERS' OUTLOOK

the world, changing the way we communicate on Earth, through connections we make in Space; changing how much, how often and how well we see the world.

These advanced Space-based observation and communication technologies are improving our ability to monitor and analyze changes on our planet and communicate with each other about them.

This has enormous implications and benefits for humankind. Just look at climate change, for example. Of the 50 different climate change variables that we need to track, over half of them can be best or only be monitored from Space. The pandemic provides another salient example. Because of Space-based Earth Observation and communication technology, we are able to monitor transportation, oil supplies, immigration patterns and supply chains. We are able to connect people from around the world, enabling instant communications and near real-time delivery of satellite data and analytics. Our understanding of a myriad of other issues can be advanced too, including sensitive land and coastal ecosystems, deforestation and illegal fishing, natural disasters, movement of people, and national defense, to name a few. What’s coming next Building on the strong heritage of the RADARSAT program, we are continuing to advance our synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capabilities with our next generation CHORUS constellation, which will initially include C-band and X-band SAR satellites, and provide radar imaging capacity that will range from broad area coverage with a 700km-wide swath to sub-metre very high resolution spotlight images.

Looking further ahead, industry is exploring applications that will feature multi-sensor fusion, onboard processing (rather than sending data back to Earth for processing), and many more innovations. Being able to fuse information more rapidly, from multiple sensor types and sources, will support the creation of richer information products that provide enhanced insights to our customers.

One challenge for all of us operating in the sector is helping people to understand the magnitude of the offer. When we consider technological advancements in EO, the uptake is there from government, defense and businesses. However, there’s still a bridge to be crossed for the broader commercial population, and even the civilian industrial population, to realize the rich business insights, the life insights, they can get from Space-based EO data, with the right applications and software environments which allow them to make the most of this information. But we know that innovation drives demand and demand drives capacity: Space-based communication was originally mainly used by governments and big industry like broadcasting, it now can be used by people simply looking to connect to the internet.

We anticipate that the impact of and interest in advanced Space-based technology will continue to accelerate. MDA is leaning in. And we aren’t the only ones. There are already thousands of companies operating in this Space. Hundreds of new ones are coming onstream every year, bringing innovation and opportunities. Proven companies like ours, that have been around for decades, are creating collaborations with next generation Space companies, with new ideas and new financing, to offer new capabilities to the market. It’s an exciting time. A time of opportunity. A time for discoveries.

ANNUAL EDITION / JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2022