Vancouver — UrtheCast Corp. (TSX:UR) (“UrtheCast” or the “Company”) today announces that it will receive $5.0 million in Government of Canada Technology Development Program (“TDP”) funding, as part of a $54 million contribution program for the development of new satellite technologies, as administered by the Government of Canada. The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development announced this award on May 5, 2016. UrtheCast’s contract for the $5.0 million portion of the TDP award is scheduled to be paid out evenly over five years.
This TDP Agreement will aid UrtheCast in the development of the ground-breaking technologies for its planned OptiSAR™ Constellation, currently slated for deployment in 2020-2021. The 16-satellite OptiSAR™ Constellation is expected to consist of eight X- and L-band SAR satellites and eight high-resolution optical satellites, flying in a paired, tandem configuration.
“We are extremely proud that Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada has selected our OptiSAR constellation as a key technology that will support Canada’s investment in future satellite systems. This validation of our technology speaks to the potential of our Synthetic Aperture Radar and Optical satellite designs,” explains UrtheCast President and Chief Executive Officer, Wade Larson.
About UrtheCast Corp.
UrtheCast Corp. is a Vancouver-based technology company that serves the rapidly evolving geospatial and geoanalytics markets with a wide range of information-rich products and services. The Company currently operates four Earth Observation sensors in space, including two cameras aboard the International Space Station and two satellites, Deimos-1 and Deimos-2. Imagery and video data captured by these sensors is downlinked to ground stations across the planet and displayed on the UrthePlatform, or distributed directly to partners and customers. UrtheCast is also developing and anticipates launching the world’s first fully-integrated constellation of multispectral optical and Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites, called OptiSAR™, in addition to its proposed UrtheDaily™ constellation concept, which the Company believes will together revolutionize monitoring of our planet with high-quality, medium and high-resolution, and high-coverage and high-revisit imagery in all weather conditions, any time of day. Common shares of UrtheCast trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ticker ‘UR’.
For more information, visit UrtheCast’s website at www.urthecast.com.