CSA Announces Health & Life Sciences Research Models Opportunity

Canadian Space Agency Funds Health Technologies for Deep-Space Exploration. Credit: Canadian Space Agency.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has posted a Health & Life Sciences Research opportunity related to human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

The announcement of opportunity (AO) fits into the CSA’s long-term space health and innovation policy to position Canada as a global leader and provide services and technologies for human exploration at the moon and eventually Mars.

The AO will provide grants up to $150,000 for up to two years and is open to Canadian universities and post-secondary institutions.

The research proposed should also “generate scientific insights that will also contribute to applications on Earth.”

In its introduction the CSA states;

In the future, human exploration of space is expected to extend beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to cis-lunar space, the surface of the Moon, and ultimately to distant targets such as Mars. The resulting expeditions will require extended periods of exposure to weightlessness and space radiation, with confinement and isolation in the extreme environment of space, all of which are linked to substantial health and performance risks.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is interested in human spaceflight and maintaining a healthy and highly qualified Canadian astronaut corps capable of participating in space exploration missions. Also, in line with the vision and priorities of the new Space Strategy for Canada, the CSA aims to enable scientific opportunities and global partnerships, and to harness space to solve everyday challenges for Canadians.

To achieve this, the CSA’s Health and Life Sciences (HLS) group conducts activities generating knowledge in fields that sustain human space flights, mitigate health risks and develop countermeasures for those missions. Since time and resources on International Space Station (ISS) are limited, CSA aims to broaden science opportunities in order to enhance and supplement flight investigations on the ISS and to optimize utilization of CSA ISS allocation.

The objectives as outlined in the AO state;

Projects selected from this CSA competition will have as their objective to increase scientific knowledge that will contribute to the efforts toward the understanding, mitigation or elimination of health risks associated with human space exploration and generate scientific insights that will also contribute to applications on Earth.

About Marc Boucher

Boucher is an entrepreneur, writer, editor & publisher. He is the founder of SpaceQ Media Inc. and CEO and co-founder of SpaceRef Interactive LLC. Boucher has 20+ years working in various roles in the space industry and a total of 30 years as a technology entrepreneur including creating Maple Square, Canada's first internet directory and search engine.

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