Canso Spaceport Announces First Customer, Plans To Launch In 2023
HALIFAX—The company behind Nova Scotia’s soon-to-be-finished commercial spaceport has announced the payload client for its first launch.
Maritime Launch Services (MLS) has signed an agreement with Nanoracks, and plans to launch a cluster of small satellites into space for the company in 2023.
Nanoracks, a Voyager Space company, is the leading commercial payload provider to the International Space Station (ISS). It provides satellite deployment services from the ISS for the Canadian Space Agency’s Canadian CubeSat Project.
Maritime Launch’s president and CEO, Steve Maiter, made the announcement November 19 at the Halifax International Security Forum.
He said the pending completion of MLS’s “Spaceport Nova Scotia,” and the announcement of its first client and launch, represents an enormous economic opportunity for Nova Scotia.
“The commercial space industry… is already at $400-billion a year and growing. It’s headed toward a trillion dollars per year by 2040,” he said.
Aerospace companies are developing satellites by the thousands that will provide global broadband, near-earth imaging, and “a myriad of other applications.”
“The backbone of that industry, though, is the ability to launch those satellites into orbit – and it’s not just launching them into orbit anywhere, it’s launching them into orbit where they want them and when they want them,” Maiter said.
Maritime Launch’s Spaceport Nova Scotia will be one of the only fully commercial launch operations in the world. It’s also in one of the best locations in the world for launching satellites into near-earth orbit.
“We’ve got this huge expanse of ocean, going thousands of kilometers south of us…It’s really hard to understate how much location matters to the commercial space launch industry,” he said.
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Jeff Manber, the CEO of Nanoracks, echoed Maiter’s comments.
Speaking to the crowd at the Halifax International Security Forum, he said his company was very comfortable using MLS for its launch.
“This is an extremely important moment in the space community. There are thousands of satellites that need to be launched. The facility is in an ideal location, you can put satellites and other payloads into orbits that are more efficient almost than any other place in the world,” he said.
For its launches, MLS will use Cyclone-4M rockets, which are developed and manufactured in Ukraine. Manber said part of his company’s decision to go with MLS for its launch was the reliability and capacity of those rockets.
At the security forum, Maiter and Manber spoke alongside a stream of delegates, including several provincial and federal politicians, as well as the president of the Canadian Space Agency, Lisa Campbell, and the head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine, Volodymyr Taftay.
The high-profile slate of speakers is an indication of how monumental a commercial spaceport could be in Nova Scotia.
Campbell said the Canadian Space Agency has signed agreements with Ukraine to foster cooperation. She reiterated the potential economic impact the commercial space industry represents.
“The fast-growing space economy is creating so many exciting opportunities for Canadian and international researchers, entrepreneurs, and investors. And what we’re seeing today is more access to space for Canada,” she said.
She said “tremendous changes” have taken place in the sector in the last few years “and it points to a prosperous future for the sector.”
“Canada needs to be part of that; we cannot miss this opportunity,” she said.
MLS was founded in 2016 and has planned to construct a spaceport in Canso since 2017. The company had initially planned for its first launch to happen in 2019, but has pushed that date several times.
Twenty-nineteen was the same year the company cleared an environmental assessment from the provincial government.
The provinces said it believed Maritime Launch could mitigate the environmental effects of its operations if it took specific measures.
Once it’s complete, MLS’s spaceport will use rockets about a third the height of a wind turbine (39 metres) to launch satellites into space for commercial companies.
The rockets will be able to carry about five tons’ worth of satellites into orbit. Matier says MLS is looking to serve “the constellation market”— essentially laying a string of small, interconnected satellites around Earth.
Trevor Nichols is the associate editor of Huddle, based in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].