Canadian satellite operator Telesat has announced agreements with Airbus Defence and Space and a consortium of Thales Alenia Space and Maxar Technologies (the owner of SSL) to further develop the Telesat LEO constellation.

Telesat’s LEO constellation aims to transform global communications by offering an unsurpassed combination of capacity, speed, security, resilience and low cost with latency comparable to, or better than, today’s terrestrial networks.

A Phase 1 test satellite built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) was launched by an Indian PSLV rocket in January.  

Airbus Defence and Space has been selected to support the System Design and Risk Management phase. Under the terms of the contract, Airbus will perform system optimisation, requirements engineering, and initial design of key hardware and software components for space, ground and user terminal segments of the Telesat LEO system.

At the end of the nine-month project term, Airbus has agreed to deliver an end-to-end solution that meets the performance, capacity and cost targets Telesat has established for its state-of-the-art LEO constellation.

The contract with the Thales/Maxar consortium covers further development of system designs for the LEO constellation.

Over the coming months, Thales Alenia Space-Maxar will complete their preliminary design, address key hardware and software development items, and perform a series of technical reviews leading to a firm proposal for manufacture and launch of Telesat’s LEO satellites and deployment of the ground system infrastructure.

Telesat anticipates deciding by mid-2019 on a prime contractor for the LEO programme – space segment, ground segment and system integration.