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WASHINGTON — The prime contractor for Canada’s contribution to the lunar Gateway believes that technology could be repurposed for other uses should the White House’s budget proposal that cancels Gateway be enacted.
Executives with MDA Space, which is building the Canadarm3 robotic arm system for Gateway, said in a May 8 earnings call they are focused for now on continuing work on Canadarm3 as the debate on the administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal unfolds in Washington.
Mike Greenley, chief executive of MDA Space, said it was business as usual for the company on the program, despite a budget proposal that seeks to cancel the Gateway. That proposal, he noted, it just the start of an appropriations process that will take most of the rest of the year, if not beyond, to complete.
“That means that largely 2025, for us, at the moment, is just get your work done, keep developing the program, keep advancing the robotic system and let that budget process continue in the background,” he said.
MDA Space received a contract valued at $1 billion Canadian ($715 million) in June 2024 from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) for Phase C and D development of Canadarm3, Canada’s main contribution to the Gateway. The Canadian government announced its intent in 2019 to offer the robotic arm to NASA for the Gateway, and in return received seats on two Artemis missions, including the assignment of Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen to Artemis 2.
The company said that it estimates less than $900 million Canadian of that contract remains as part of an overall MDA Space backlog of $4.8 billion Canadian.
In the call, Greenley said the work on Canadarm3 might be repurposed in some way for other lunar activities if Congress goes along with the cancellation of the Gateway. “NASA has signaled its commitment to work with Artemis partners, which include the Canadian Space Agency, on expanding opportunities for meaningful collaboration on the moon and Mars and to repurpose components for use in other missions,” he said.
He added that leadership of space agencies involved in Artemis are “all in discussions about where can they use all these different elements to do good things on the moon and make sure that everyone’s contributions are recognized and useful.”
There are also commercial applications of the Canadarm3 technology. MDA Space announced last year a new line of space robotics products called MDA Skymaker, leveraging technologies the company is developing for Canadarm3. That includes robotic arms for use on Starlab Space’s proposed commercial space station and a lunar rover that Lunar Outpost is offering to NASA’s Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services program.
Greenley added that other commercial space stations are interested in the MDA Skymaker robotic arms. “So there is strong opportunity for us to deploy Canadian robotics to the commercial space stations in low Earth orbit.”
He added that, even with the threat of cancellation for the Gateway and some other elements of the Artemis lunar exploration campaign, there remains strong interest in returning to the moon as soon as possible. “So the reconfiguration of budgets to focus on certain things like ensuring we get to the moon and ensuring there’s a follow-on effort to Mars, I think, are very positive for the opportunities that we continue to track in our pipeline.”
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