Five years after the first of three spacecraft were scheduled for orbit; the showpiece satellite project of Canada has been affected with another launch delay.
Sometime between 18 and 24 February 2019, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) is set to be launched from an air force base in California.
This is the fifth delay as the project worth $1 billion was affected with some technical troubles and other problems.
The mission follows RADARSAT-1 (1995-2012) and RADARSAT-2 (2007-present), pioneering Canadian satellite projects which utilize synthetic aperture radar to observe the fine details of the Earth’s surface, even when the surface is covered with clouds and have bad weather.
The images from these satellites will help the sovereignty of Canadian coastlines and the North.
A $706 million fixed-price contract was signed with MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (now MDA, a unit of U.S.-based Maxar Technologies) in 2013 to manufacture, assemble, launch and operate the trio of satellites for the first year.
