Chris Johnson
CEO / Maxar Space Systems
Driven by the experience of six decades in the space industry, Maxar Space Systems, lead by CEO Chris Johnson, is on the forefront of cutting-edge technology that drives exploration and innovation that pushes the boundaries of where humans can go in the solar system.
America first successfully launched a satellite into space on January 31, 1958. Just two years later, Philco—the company that would eventually become Maxar Space Systems—got into the game by building the world’s first active repeater satellite. In other words, when it comes to human space exploration, Maxar Space Systems has truly been there since the beginning.
But while the company—which provides mission systems engineering, product design, and spacecraft manufacturing, assembly, integration, and testing—acknowledges its past and the market advantage it provides, it now constantly has its sights set on the future.
“The platforms and capabilities we have [at Maxar Space Systems], and our legacy and heritage, are well-suited for some of the new space opportunities, whether it’s on the national security side, civil or commercial,” said the company’s CEO, Chris Johnson, in a CEO North America Magazine interview. Now, “it’s all about us finding the right partners and the right customers to leverage that 60 years.”
Changes Leading to Growth
Through acquisitions and other business decisions, Maxar Space Systems has evolved throughout its 60-year history. The current company name came into play in 2017 with the founding of Maxar Technologies, which was a publicly traded business. However, when it was purchased in 2023 by private equity firms Advent International and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, the company was split into two independent businesses: Maxar Intelligence, focused on geospatial intelligence, and Maxar Space Systems, concentrated on space technology and manufacturing, which Johnson leads.
“We’ve got real on-orbit heritage with reliability and capability, but also the ability to move quickly to respond to customer needs and developing technologies.”
Today, Maxar Space Systems serves customers in 70 countries. More than 90 Maxar Space-built communications satellites are in orbit, with some 2.4 billion people relying on the broadcasting services powered by those satellites. Additionally, more than 300 Maxar Space-built spacecrafts have launched, totaling an excess of 2,900 collective years in orbit.
It was in 2023 that Johnson, who was previously a senior vice president and general manager at Maxar Technologies, took on the CEO position for the newly formed standalone business. The split, the business executive said, “put me in a spot to continue to develop and grow what I thought was a strong business, but one that needed additional focus on diversification into other customer segments.”
For a long time, Maxar Space Systems concentrated on geostationary communications programs. “Think DirectTV, think SiriusXM radio,” Johnson explained. “That was a great market and allowed us the opportunity to have a really strong business.
“There’s a ton of excitement in space and space development and space market opportunities.”
However, that market has seen changes in recent years. Johnson sees that as an opportunity for continued growth into national security space programs, as well as additional commercial and civil space initiatives. With the new company’s clear focus on space manufacturing and hardware, it felt like the perfect opportunity for Johnson to lead a team stepping up into that specific business and growth strategy.
He sees that there’s a demand for small systems that are proliferated in space orbits that are less congested. “Back when the cost of a launch was prohibitive—prior to the SpaceX Falcon 9 days—the approach was big,” Johnson mused. “You’d want to stuff as much as possible onto one particular rocket.”
But with the advent of SpaceX, Elon Musk’s private spacecraft manufacturing company, as well as Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, the approach isn’t quite as broad—and that provides a great growth opportunity for Maxar Space Systems and its capabilities over the next three to five years, Johnson said. Because the company has more platforms, it can do remote sensing in a more cost-effective way and have more revisits on Earth. Or, he added, if low Earth orbit—the area around Earth that’s the closest—is crowded, there are other orbits where Maxar’s capabilities could thrive.
A Return to the Moon
Maxar Space Systems’ diversification efforts also focus on the civil space, with Johnson noting that the company is involved in NASA’s Artemis program, the mission of which is to return to the moon and, eventually, Mars. A key element of the program is Gateway, the first space station in lunar orbit—as compared to the International Space Station’s low Earth orbit—for which Maxar Space Systems is building the power and propulsion element that provides the station with power and allows it to maintain its orbit around the Moon.
“The technology that we’re developing with NASA also opens opportunities for other space stations, whether commercially funded around the Earth or other space stations that can support the journey into the rest of space,” Johnson said.
He sees space exploration as similar to the expansion of America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. “You needed waypoints along the way as people moved west,” he said in comparison. “Space will work in a very similar way.”
Innovation Through Collaboration
Back here on Earth, Johnson and his team at Maxar Space Systems have a manufacturing focus that requires a lot of front-end engineering, and “a lot of what we’re going to do to drive efficiency goes hand in hand with collaboration,” he said.
Complex space systems require teamwork across different subsystems and disciplines in order to design and implement. That cohesive, cross-cutting approach is vital to develop systems that are easily implemented, tested, designed, and then, finally, manufactured.
The collaboration begins at the first step of research and development, including the proposal and bid, and continues through the product’s lifecycle. Engineers designing Maxar Space Systems’ new technologies and products need to keep an eye on manufacturability, so they bring in the employees who are actually “turning the wrenches” to build the satellites. Then, within the program lifecycle, there are specific collaboration events that bring a variety of specialists together.
“You can’t go up and fix it if they’re not right,” Johnson elaborated.
“When you think about getting ready to launch and support a customer in orbit for 10, 15, 20 years, there are opportunities to come together to collaborate with customers and suppliers.”
Aligning with Strategic Partners
About half of Maxar Space Systems’ contract values come from supply chain partners, Johnson said, so it’s critical to maintain those relationships. But the key to developing those strong supplier relationships is working together to align the roadmaps to future technologies and then, as a prime contractor, go capture the shifts in the market opportunities.
However, Maxar Space Systems is also regularly on the hunt for suppliers that are able to meet mission needs or are on the cutting-edge of what they want to do. Johnson sees a benefit in developing a broader supply space in order to continue to advance technologies and capabilities.
“Sometimes we don’t want to be stuck from a vendor perspective if there’s a difficult situation or there’s an opportunity for us to advance technology in other areas,” he explained.
Johnson points to the size of Maxar Space Systems as an advantage for the relationships. Although the company has the experience of a large-scale defense program manufacturer, just like Lockheed, Boeing and Raytheon, the company has just around 1,800 employees and contractors—that may sound large, but it’s quite small in the aerospace and defense industry.
Because of that, “we’re well-positioned in the market to react quickly to changing trends and pivot exceptionally fast to address market needs,” Johnson said.
This smaller size also allows Johnson to work directly with the CEOs of Maxar’s supply chain partners. “If there are opportunities for us to partner to go after a new opportunity, you don’t have to reach far without the organization to get to me and my core leadership team to make decisions,” he explained. “In other businesses, there are multiple levels of organization you’d have to go through to have those conversations.”
“We have the heritage and the experience of a large manufacturer, but at the scale that is much more like a start-up.”
Understanding the Industry
These days, Maxar Space Systems is seeing a significant change in the type of systems and capabilities that its customers seek, but the company’s evolving legacy puts it in a prime spot to succeed. The company’s clear understanding of the industry’s needs—the cost, the schedules, and more—is part of its DNA, particularly in a series of new opportunities on the national security space side of operations.
Maxar Space Systems can move quickly while still providing high-quality solutions, and the team’s mindset is prepared to solve tough problems. For example, when the Maxar team decided to invest in the Maxar 300™ series spacecraft, a low Earth orbit platform for proliferated LEO, to include the Space Development agency, the shift in strategic approach was was done over the course of weeks, not months or years, Johnson shared at this magazine interview.
“The ability to provide capability on a rapid commercial timeframe is even more important today than it has been in the past,” he said, “given the capabilities that we need to support life on Earth, but also those from potential adversaries around the world.”
