Canadian Department of Defense has awarded MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA), a global communications and information company, a CA$48.5 million contract to deliver a broad-area global maritime and Arctic surveillance solution, called Polar Epsilon 2 (PE2).
The contract includes two years of in-service support to operate and maintain the delivered systems. The contract also has options which could increase the contract value to CA$63.1 million.
The PE2 ground systems will include ground segment systems with the capability to receive and exploit information from the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellites, currently being built by MDA for the Canadian Space Agency. PE2 will provide DND with daily maritime information over millions of square kilometers from SAR imagery, all within minutes of imaging.
In 2011 MDA delivered PE2’s predecessor Polar Epsilon to DND. Polar Epsilon is a broad-area maritime surveillance system based on MDA’s RADARSAT-2 satellite. Since 2012, MDA has been providing in-service operational support for the east and west coast RADARSAT-2 ground systems that support the deliverables under the Polar Epsilon project.
The RCM is a three-satellite configuration that will provide daily revisits of Canada’s vast territory and maritime approaches, as well as daily access to 90% of the world’s surface.