The Government of Canada today awarded MDA Space a $999.8 million contract for Phase C, the final design, and Phase D for construction, system assembly, integration and testing of the Canadarm3 robotic system.
The contract remains at $268.9 million. Phase B contract awarded to MDA Space in early 2022 for the preliminary design of the Canadarm3 robotic system.
The Canadarm3 will be used at the Lunar Gateway as part of the NASA-led Artemis program. The Gateway will be a small outpost “a thousand times farther from Earth than the International Space Station (ISS),” according to the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). For part of the year, its crew will be made up of American and international astronauts, probably including Canadians at some point.
The first Canadian to travel to the vicinity of the Moon will be CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who is part of the Artemis II Mission that will make the trip in an Orion spacecraft no earlier than September of next year. The Lunar Gateway will not be in orbit around the Moon by then and the Artemis II mission will perform a lunar flyby as illustrated below.
The CSA states that “Canadarm3 will serve as a critical component and will be used to maintain, repair and inspect Gateway, relocate modules, enable science in lunar orbit, assist astronauts during spacewalks and capture visiting spacecraft. Like Gateway itself, Canadarm3 operations will be highly autonomous, minimizing the need for direct human intervention, representing a major advancement in spacecraft capability.”
MDA Space said it will “support the commissioning of the Canadarm3 robotic system once it is in orbit from the company's new mission control facilities at its global headquarters and Space Robotics Center of Excellence in Brampton, Ontario. The contract will also include planning and training of personnel in preparation for in-orbit mission operations.”
MDA Space added that the “contract will involve more than 200 Canadian companies in the MDA Space supply chain, supporting job creation.” Over the 10-year project, the government said that “the investments are expected to create and sustain more than 1,000 well-paid jobs in an industrial sector that is among the most innovative and requires the most research and development.”
MDA Space expects the contract to run through March 2030. While no launch date has been set for Gateway, NASA said that “on-orbit assembly of the fully realized Gateway space station will begin with the Artemis IV mission launching no earlier than September 2028.”
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