Nearly two years ago, Advent International announced its plans to acquire Maxar Technologies and take the space company private.

The deal closed last year, and since then, the private equity firm has split the portfolio into two

separate companies. Maxar Intelligence which collects Earth observation data and

sells it to governments and companies and Maxar Space Systems which makes satellites and other space hardware.

Maxar Space Systems CEO Chris Johnson says this split has enabled more focus and faster investment.

We're big enough and been around long enough to do real things

like part of the space station for the moon, but we're small enough and agile enough

in order to adjust to customer demands and market demands without having to go up three or four

or ten layers of management.

I've got a direct access to my private equity board.

We want to go do something.

Here's the business justification, let's go.

And so I think that focus on core satellite manufacturing business has been really great to drive

additional investment and additional focus on my business in particular.

The manufacturing business is perhaps best known for

building Sirius XM's radio satellite constellation.

It's still making communications satellites, but Maxar Space Systems is also developing the next-gen

spacecraft for its sister company, the Worldview Legion satellites.

Today and over the last few years we've really been focused in on diversifying our product mix and so things like

Worldview Legion and so building the next generation of 30-centimeter class earth observation

imagery to support various Intel missions, various things you might see on mapping functions. That's been a big growth area for us.

On this episode, Maxar Space Systems Johnson discusses the

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