Canada-based UrtheCast has won a grant from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada's Industrial Technologies Office to support the ongoing development of its Earth observation satellites programme, OptiSAR Constellation.
A part of Industrial Technologies Office’s Strategic Aerospace & Defense Initiative (SADI) programme, the C$17.6m ($12m) grant will be provided in quarterly instalments through 31 March 2021.
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Disbursement of the funds under the SADI programme is subject to several customary conditions.
After receiving the funding, UrtheCast will use the same during the critical pre-commercial design and development work of the OptiSAR programme over the next four years.
UrtheCast president and CEO Wade Larson said: “This is a clear vote of confidence in UrtheCast and we believe it further validates the strategic and commercial opportunities of our SAR and optical satellite technologies.
“Today marks an important step forward for the OptiSAR Constellation, and we believe the technologies we are developing through this program will be beneficial, not only for UrtheCast, but for the rest of the A&D sector and high-tech ecosystem in Canada in general.”
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By GlobalDataOnce developed, the OptiSAR Constellation will have a group of 16 satellites, which include eight X- and L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites and eight high-resolution optical satellites.
UrtheCast currently operates Earth observation (EO) sensors in space, including the Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 satellites, to produce imagery data that is displayed on the company’s cloud-based web platform.
