Welcome to MDA Orbital Optics, a company based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxfordshire in the United Kingdom.

The company was started in 2006 to enable the commercial sale of RAL’s leading range of low cost space optical cameras. It is now a subsidiary company of MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd (MDA) of Canada which has acquired a controlling interest in the company to add to its existing radar and satcom payloads, and its turnkey satellite mission offerings.

A series of successful cameras have been designed and built by the Space Science and Technology Department (SSTD) of RAL for both the home and overseas markets. The launch of the TopSat mission in 2005 flying the RALCam 1, a 2.5 meter resolution camera has led to growing interest in low cost high resolution camera technology. MDA has an exclusive licence from RAL to sell this range of low cost cameras.

MDA also has access to a series of RAL Ground Stations which are a 12m S-Band antenna, a 4.5m S and X-Band antenna and a 2.5m S-Band antenna. They will be used to receive and manage data on behalf of customers. They also have a telemetry tracking and control capability.

This web site sets out the products available and how sales will be implemented maintaining the reliability of the instruments and the low cost that has made TopSat such a success.

MDA Orbital Optics is a trading name of Orbital Optics Limited used under licence from MDA.