Industry Minister Jim Prentice decided to take 30 more days to review the purchase of MDA, builder of the robot Dextre attached to the International Space Station, by US firm Alliant Techsystems for 1.3 billion dollars (Canadian, US).

The sale was announced in January, and under Canadian law the minister would normally have until March 22 to decide if the sale is in Canada's interests.

Prentice's spokesman Ghyslain Charron told AFP a final decision was deferred to April 21, but declined to say why.

In addition to Dextre, the Richmond, British Columbia-based company also developed the space robotic arm Canadarm used by NASA, and Radarsat-2 -- a powerful observation satellite launched in December with 445 million dollars in funding from the Canadian government.

Dextre was only successfully installed on the space station on Wednesday, after a few glitches.

Earlier Thursday two opposition parties said the future of Canada's space industry, national security, and even its Arctic sovereignty could be jeopardized by the sale of MDA to a foreign firm.

"As it stands, all the evidence points to a sale that will cripple one of Canada's great industrial success stories, in favor of handing over state-of-the-art technology to an American arms manufacturer," said New Democrat MP Peggy Nash.

"It's a huge waste of years of strategic economic investment and the hundreds of millions of Canadian taxpayer dollars in MDA."

As such, Prentice must "say a resounding no to selling off another important piece of Canada's national security, industry, talent, and pride," she added.

The opposition parties argue that Radarsat-2 would be a key tool in mapping and keeping an eye on the Arctic.

Canada is presently at odds with Russia, Denmark, Norway and the United States over 1.2 million square kilometers (460,000 square miles) of Arctic seabed.

Each nation is claiming overlapping sections of the sea floor, believed to hold 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves. All of them, including Ottawa's allies, contend Canada's hold on the Northwest Passage.

Liberal MP Scott Brison suggested the country's prominence in the space industry would suffer if the firm were sold to Alliant, said to be the largest ammunitions manufacturer in the United States.

"It is very clear from a space industry perspective that this sale could be very bad for Canada," Brison said.

"And unless the government and (Alliant) can alleviate these concerns, the minister should exercise his authority under the Investment Canada Act and block the sale."

Previously, two MDA engineers quit in protest over the sale and another testified to a parliamentary committee on behalf of 12 employees opposed to the sale.

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