COM DEV Offers Canadian Space Agency M&Ms—Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite (Launch)

[SatNews] “The micro-satellite bus that we used has a great deal of potential for future space missions and it supports the most capable payload ever built for detecting ships through satellite-AIS.

COM DEV International Ltd. (TSX:CDV), (“COM DEV” or “the Company”), manufacturer of space hardware subsystems, today announced that the Maritime Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite (M3MSat) has completed final testing at the Canadian Space Agency’s David Florida Laboratory in Ottawa, Ontario.

The satellite is being prepared for shipment to Russia for a launch by Roscosmos from the Baikonur Cosmodrome launch facilities in Kazakhstan in December 2013.

The M3MSat low-Earth orbit micro-satellite is a project of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), an Agency of Canada’s Department of National Defence (DND).

COM DEV is the mission prime contractor for the project. The satellite bus and payload were designed, developed, built, and tested by COM DEV. COM DEV along with its subsidiary exactEarth co-invested in the M3MSat spacecraft to enhance its capabilities and performance.

“We are very pleased that the M3MSat satellite has passed this crucial stage of testing,” said Michael Pley, CEO of COM DEV International. “The micro-satellite bus that we used has a great deal of potential for future space missions and it supports the most capable payload ever built for detecting ships through satellite-AIS. 

DRDC and the CSA are very important clients for the company and we are grateful for the opportunity to be their mission prime contractor on this significant research and development project.”

The M3M micro-satellite will carry two payloads. The primary payload is an advanced Automatic Identification System (AIS) for detecting vessels. The secondary payload is a Low Data Rate (LDR) communications package that will receive and retransmit data from isolated earth-based transmitters. DND has granted a licence to exactEarth to commercialize the AIS data collected from M3MSat and integrate it with the data collected from the rest of the exactEarth constellation. COM DEV built both payloads, the satellite bus and integrated the complete spacecraft at its facilities in Cambridge and Ottawa, Ontario.