Satellite equipment for American military to be made in Ontario
by Matt Powell
Contract valued at $12 million
CAMBRIDGE—COM DEV International Ltd. announced today it has been awarded a contract valued at $9 million that will provide equipment for an American military communications satellite. The new components will be built at COM DEV’s facility in Cambridge, where about 1000 people will separately work on the new satellite hardware.
The company is a manufacturer of space hardware subsystems and earned fourth quarter revenues of $220 million in 2010, said COM DEV spokesman, Jeff Codispodi.
About $3 million worth of pre-production work is already completed, but COM DEV will earn another $9 million to provide beam select subsystems and switch assemblies for the satellite. The project is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.
Codispodi said the company has worked on a number of military programs before including the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS). MUOS is a network of American military satellites that provides communications signals to mobile and fixed military equipment. COM DEV also developed CloudSat, a radar instrument designed to look at earth’s clouds from space to determine their water content and vertical profile.
It is also reported that the company will develop a new telescope designed to replace the Hubble Space Telescope currently in use.
