Wyvern\u2019s Kurtis Broda writes that the CSA needs to support moonshots from Canadian companies.<\/p>\n
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Kurtis Broda is co-founder and COO of Wyvern, an Edmonton-based company that captures high-resolution images of Earth from space.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A week before Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen left for the moon on April 1, the Canadian lunar rover mission was cancelled. Days later, the Lunar Gateway\u2014an international space station that was intended to orbit the moon as part of the Artemis program\u2014was paused, putting the future of Canadarm3<\/a> in doubt.<\/p>\n Canada has sent an astronaut to the moon while the industry that should be powering its future in space is shrinking. Despite continued government investment, Canada\u2019s space sector generated 25 percent less revenue in 2024 than it did in 2014. A key reason, identified in RBC\u2019s recent Higher Orbit report<\/a>, is clear: the government rarely buys from innovative Canadian companies reliably enough for those companies to grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n The $1-billion<\/a> Canadarm3 contract with MDA Space tells part of the story. The cancellation of the $43-million Canadian Lunar Rover\u2014a mission actually built around emerging Canadian companies\u2014tells the rest.<\/p>\n The wrong bets<\/p>\n MDA is one of Canada\u2019s most capable<\/a> aerospace companies. But the Lunar Gateway was a flawed program before Canada ever signed on. The concept was built around NASA\u2019s Space Launch System (SLS), a rocket that had accumulated more than $23 billion USD in costs since 2011, running 140 percent over budget at $4 billion per launch, and that appeared to be kept alive largely by congressional politics<\/a> rather than operational merit.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Lunar Gateway gave SLS a purpose. However, when SpaceX\u2019s Starship offered a cheaper path directly to the lunar surface, NASA shifted strategy, and Gateway became irrelevant. Canada had already committed $1 billion to MDA for an arm to service a station many in the industry doubted would ever be built. That bet is now on pause indefinitely.<\/p>\n Canada has sent an astronaut to the moon while the industry that should be powering its future in space is shrinking.<\/p>\n The Canadian Lunar Rover was different. A sovereign mission built in Canada, led by Canadensys Aerospace, with a supply chain spanning over 30 Canadian companies and universities\u2014including Mission Control, an Ottawa firm developing AI-enabled autonomous navigation for lunar environments. By cancellation, the rover project had reached Phase C of development, approaching critical design review. This wasn\u2019t an early concept; it was a mature mission caught in a government-wide budget review and killed while the $1-billion arm for a paused space station stayed on the books.\u00a0<\/p>\n Canadensys noted they are now in discussions<\/a> with American and European partners to apply five years of Canadian-funded development work to foreign lunar programs. Canada paid for that knowledge. Other countries will benefit from it.<\/p>\n This is what the structural problem looks like in practice. An anchor customer is a consistent government buyer\u2014one whose procurement is reliable enough that companies can hire, invest, and scale around it. NASA plays this role for the American space industry. The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) largely does not. The Lunar Rover was one of the rare cases where it was. Thirty Canadian companies had a government buyer, a real mission, and a path to building exportable capability. Cancelling it doesn\u2019t just lose a mission, it removes one of the only working examples of the model.<\/p>\n A more focused CSA<\/p>\n These project cancellations create a political window that won\u2019t stay open long. The goal is concrete: make the CSA a reliable anchor customer for innovative Canadian companies, not just an occasional one. Two changes would move the needle.<\/p>\n