Magellan Aerospace On A Roll…

Magellan Aerospace has announced the successful, formal delivery acceptance of the CASSIOPE small satellite bus by Macdonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) of Vancouver. CASSIOPE is a multi-purpose mission to conduct space environment research and advanced telecommunications technology demonstration. The bus has completed integration and testing at Magellan’s Winnipeg facilities, and will now begin instrument integration and spacecraft-level testing. The integrated spacecraft will be shipped to test facilities in Ottawa later in 2008 for environmental testing. CASSIOPE is scheduled for launch in 2009. The CASSIOPE bus is the first of the MAC-200 small satellite buses developed by Magellan to meet the needs of the Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) small satellite missions. Magellan designed the MAC-200 bus to incorporate standard subsystems and components that can be tailored to the spacecraft layout for individual missions. The MAC-200 accommodates a range of mission requirements, instrument interfaces and launcher environments in a cost effective manner and will support mission lifetimes of up to 7 years. The MAC-200 development was built on the experience and success of Magellan’s SCISAT-1, the first small satellite developed in Canada in over 40 years. SCISAT-1 continues to perform flawlessly in orbit after nearly 5 years, providing scientists with critical data on the ozone layer and other atmospheric constituents.

Yes, a good day for Magellan—the company has been awarded a contract to build the development heat shields for the Orion Space Shuttle replacement program by Lockheed Martin Space Systems Division in Denver, Colorado. Magellan’s Aeronca facility in Middletown, Ohio, will develop the lightweight titanium honeycomb heat shield panels that help protect the space capsule from the temperature extremes experienced during re-entry. This US $12M contract includes engineering, tooling, hardware, and fabrication of two development heat shield panels. In October 2007, Aeronca, Inc. was selected as the supplier of choice for the heat shields for the Orion Program shortly after NASA had selected Lockheed Martin as the prime contractor to design, develop and build the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). Orion is the planned replacement for the space shuttle that will become the backbone of the agency’s human spaceflight program. In 2010 the current space shuttle configuration will be retired and the new Orion variant is scheduled for launch in 2011. Magellan expects to receive follow-on contracts for up to 28 production units subsequent to the completion of the development panels required for full scale testing.