Four new Canadian satellites in space, a resupply of bio-monitor wearables, and the latest funding for Canadian space technology—here’s the last week in the Canadian space industry 🍁
Wednesday: Montreal’s NorthStar Earth & Space launched its first 4 Space Situational Awareness (SSA) satellites.
NorthStar is building the world’s first satellite constellation to combat space collisions. These Cubesats will provide observations of over 128 million space objects that will provide always-on coverage in near-Earth LEO, MEO, and GEO regimes.
The satellites are equipped with sensors that enable them to track objects as small as five cm in low EO and 40 cm across in geostationary orbit.
After a launch delay on January 27th due to weather concerns (lightning risk, thunderstorms, rain, strong upper winds, you name it), the satellites were successfully deployed into orbit roughly 530km above the Earth’s surface early Wednesday morning via RocketLab’s Electron rocket.
It was RocketLab’s first mission of 2024, and in addition to delivering the payload to orbit, they also recovered their rocket booster.
NorthStar’s constellation will provide several features through its object tracking service—conjecture warnings, event detections, and flight plan validations—all of these serve to reduce the ever-growing threat of space collisions.
“Now, the work begins at NorthStar to deliver the services to our eagerly awaiting clients,” said Stewart Bain, CEO and Founder Of NorthStar, to SpaceWatch.Global. “Our industry can start now to change the way we manage our essential space environment.”
But that’s not the end of the story—NorthStar aims to launch eight additional satellites on two future Electron missions by 2026.
Thursday: NASA astronauts Loral O’Hara and Jasmin Moghbeli used the Canadarm2 to grapple Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus cargo ship as it made its approach to the International Space Station.
How do they get anything done with this gorgeous piece of tech just staring right at them https://t.co/76LzjzRon1 pic.twitter.com/jB5VlNZyZn
— rory 🍁 (@rory_mg) February 1, 2024
Cygnus’ payload included standard food and equipment for the crew (including a 3D printer!), as well as Bio-Monitor wearables for the Canadian experiment, Space Health. The goal of Space Health is to analyze how astronauts’ cardiovascular systems function on the ISS, with discoveries benefiting not only those in space, but for us back on Earth.
POV: You're an astronaut on the International Space Station who is getting ready to use the Canadarm2 to capture a precious payload 🇨🇦🦾#cdnspace #canadainspace pic.twitter.com/7HpC85odDA
— rory 🍁 (@rory_mg) February 1, 2024
Bonus: This announcement happened back on January 17th, but it’s important nonetheless—the Canadian Space Agency awarded $6.3M in contributions to support three companies with their technology demonstrations in space.
🛰️ $2M was awarded to Montreal’s GHGSat for an on-orbit demonstration of its next-gen Grating Spectrometer Technology for Satellite-Based Methane Monitoring (GRTSBMM??).
In short, this will improve methane detection threshold, and will contribute to Canada’s 2030 Sustainable Development goals.
You may have heard about GHGSat back in 2022 when it became the first in the world to have a satellite detect methane emissions from cows in California. It pinpointed five methane plumes from a single cattle farm in San Joaquin Valley.
🤖 $2.15M was awarded to Ottawa’s Mission Control Space Services to demonstrate a machine learning operations pipeline and software technology in space. This will help Mission Control to understand the requirements involved in identifying trustworthy use of AI models in space.
Mission Control became the first company in the world to deploy deep learning A.I in lunar orbit in April 2023. They partnered with Japan’s ispace and the United Arab Emirates space program to develop a deep-learning A.I system for the UAE’s tiny rover, Rashid. Unfortunately the ispace lunar lander rover crashed into the Moon’s surface. Despite this setback, the software was still operational before the crash landing.
🛰️ $2.15M was awarded to Cambridge’s StarSpec Technologies to perform an on-orbit demo of its Attitude Determination & Control System (ADCS). The goal of the demo is to complete space-based packaging & adaptation of components for their Inspire Sat LEO satellite.
StarSpec helps companies, technology developers, and researches achieve access to space quicker by making existing hardware and software “space-qualified.” They’re part of NASA’s EXCITE (Exoplanet Climate Infrared Telescope) mission, which will launch a telescope via balloons ~ 40km above the Earth’s surface to study exoplanets using infrared spectroscopy.
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Hope you enjoyed this piece – thanks for reading!
