The CEO of Maxar, Dan Jablonsky, issued the following statement in regard to the company's operations during the current coronavirus difficulties.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound effect on our global society. As we navigate through this uncharted territory together, I wanted to share an update on the operational status of our business, some of the actions Maxar has taken and my perspective on the critical role that our industry will play throughout the duration of this crisis and beyond.
Maxar’s response Maxar has activated our standing pandemic crisis response plan to protect the health and safety of our team members, families, customers and communities while continuing to meet our commitments to customers. Our mitigation strategies cover employee preparation, travel, supply chain, virtual-work readiness, facility preparation and communications.
All Maxar locations are currently operational through a combination of work from home and limited personnel working onsite for essential operations. As aerospace manufacturing, communications and defense are federal critical infrastructure sectors, Maxar is exempt from shelter-in-place orders issued by California, allowing us to keep some of our workforce on site to maintain critical operations. Our protocols and operational posture are part of a greater collective effort across communities and regions to flatten the curve on COVID-19 case volumes to avoid overwhelming the capacity of the healthcare system.
The role of Space Infrastructure & Earth Intelligence Maxar is responsible for providing operational support to 92 on-orbit, operating communications satellites worldwide. A large proportion of these provide critical communications to national governments, state and local first responders and television and radio networks. We also continue work on various satellite programs that will provide important resiliency and capacity for these critical communications and network infrastructures.
In addition to communications satellites, we are building our own next-generation imaging satellite constellation, WorldView Legion, which will dramatically expand our ability to collect the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite imagery in 2021. And for NASA we are developing spacecraft and robotics that will demonstrate in-orbit satellite refueling and assembly; improve pollution monitoring in North America; explore an all-metal asteroid; and provide power and propulsion for the Gateway spacecraft that will enable a sustainable human deep-space presence in collaboration with international partners.
Maxar’s Earth Intelligence capabilities provide actionable insights that allow governments, commercial partners and non-governmental organizations to make decisions with confidence. Our Mission Operations Center in Colorado is staffed 24/7, flying our WorldView imaging satellites and delivering timely data to customers over secure networks. More than 300,000 U.S. Government users have online access to our imagery collections in near-real time and historical imagery archive, and hundreds of Maxar team members perform classified geospatial intelligence work in support of national security missions at U.S. Government sites. More than 50 allied nations around the world rely on Maxar to augment their national intelligence services.
The pandemic has highlighted the value of global transparency like never before. Maxar’s News Bureau initiative supports news reporting efforts around the world, documenting significant events such as the rapid construction of hospitals in Wuhan, China; the quarantine of the Diamond Princess cruise ship in Japan; and the dramatic drop in activity at transportation centers, businesses and public spaces around the world. Our analytics team in Tampa, Fla., created a Spotlight report that used satellite imagery, country-scale Human Landscape datasets and crowdsourcing to assess where and how the coronavirus spread in Iran.
The path forward No one can predict exactly how the course of events will unfold in the weeks and months ahead, but I am encouraged by the tremendous cooperation we have already seen between governments and the private sector. America, allied nations and citizens across the world are uniquely reliant on commercial firms for many essential services, and commercial firms like Maxar have a duty to continue delivering those services while minimizing risk to employees. We will keep moving forward, we will continue to learn and adapt and we will become more resilient as a company and team.
Stay safe and best regards, Dan Jablonsky President & CEO, Maxar Technologies
