MDA opened a 1,400-square-meter facility production facility in Montreal in 2023 with a clean room, shown above. The company is also adding a 26,000-square-meter extension to an existing facility nearby, more than doubling its constellation manufacturing space to reach the capacity to build two satellites a day.

EchoStar has placed a $1.3 billion order with MDA Space for the first 100 satellites of a $5 billion direct-to-device connectivity constellation, even as regulatory scrutiny of the company’s spectrum licenses threatens to push it into bankruptcy.

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Jason Rainbow writes about satellite telecom, space finance and commercial markets for SpaceNews. He has spent more than a decade covering the global space industry as a business journalist. Previously, he was Group Editor-in-Chief for Finance Information...