After reports that Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is scaling back its rideshare program, Canada’s space industry could be faced with either turbulent clouds or a silver lining on its route toward the stars.
Hugh Kolias,
“The industry hasn’t been investing in medium-lift, because everyone thought SpaceX had it solved.”
Canada Rocket Company
SpaceX, which recently went public in the largest IPO in history, holds most of the commercial market for sending payloads like satellites into space. But, according to Reuters, the company is increasingly favouring spots for its own Starlink satellites rather than third-party payloads, squeezing out companies that want to hitch a ride. Now, Bloomberg reports that SpaceX has started turning away customers seeking to put their payloads aboard its Falcon 9 rocket’s rideshare program past 2028. BetaKit has reached out to SpaceX for comment.
For Canada’s burgeoning space launch industry, which the federal government is supporting to build sovereign launch capacity, the news could present a big opportunity.
“For us, this is fantastic,” said Hugh Kolias, CEO of Canada Rocket Company, a Toronto-based startup trying to build medium-lift launch vehicles in Canada. While securing a ride to orbit has gotten more challenging, he said, “the industry hasn’t been investing in medium-lift, because everyone thought SpaceX had it solved.”
The possibility of SpaceX not dominating the market has encouraged Canada Rocket Company to upgrade the size of its planned launch vehicle, he said. However, his company is still about eight years from launch.
For Markham, Ont.-based NordSpace, which is developing both light-load launch capacity and satellites for space missions, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 scaleback made CEO Rahul Goel feel “vindicated.”
“By the time our launch vehicle comes online, we want to have enough internal demand for satellite launches that we’re not reliant on any third parties, and we can achieve low internal cost the way SpaceX does for Starlink,” Goel said in an interview. In the near term, Goel said there’s a cohort of companies, including NordSpace, that still have slots booked on the Falcon 9.
RELATED: Kepler to launch historic satellite network on SpaceX rocket this Sunday
Reaction Dynamics director of business, technology, and strategy, Jesse Mikelberg, told BetaKit that though he couldn’t comment on SpaceX’s plans, launch capacity tightening will reinforce that “demand for launch continues to outpace supply, dramatically.”
The Longueuil-Que.-based company is also building space launch vehicles, joining its peers in addressing a gap in Canada’s infrastructure. Right now, Canada is the only G7 country without the capacity to independently launch missions into orbit. The federal government pledged nearly $225 million to build sovereign space launch capacity in March, most of which will go toward Maritime Launch Services’ spaceport in Nova Scotia.
For companies that rely on SpaceX as a launch partner, it exposes a “critical dependency” on the rockets of a US company to get objects into space, according to Wyvern CEO Christopher Robson. In an email to BetaKit, he explained that SpaceX’s Transporter program ate up 57 percent of Western small satellite launch demand between 2019 and 2023, excluding Starlink and OneWeb, while it raised prices.
Though Wyvern has sent satellites into space on Falcon 9 before, Robson said that it’s building its satellites to fit on light and medium-launch vehicles, like the ones being built by NordSpace, CRC, and Reaction Dynamics.
Despite the uncertainty surrounding the future of SpaceX flights, some companies have already secured their rides well in advance. This week, the feds announced a $2.3-billion contract for Telesat to bolster Arctic military communications using satellites built by Brampton, Ont.-based MDA Space—which involves sending 69 more satellites into Telesat’s existing network in space on SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
In an email to BetaKit, a Telesat spokesperson said that all satellites included in the deal, including the newly announced ones, will be launched on already-secured Falcon 9 rockets. “One of these rockets does remain subject to the completion of a launch services agreement, but all launches are expected to occur before the start of Telesat Lightspeed global service, on track for Q1 2028,” the spokesperson said.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by SpaceX.