Earlier this month, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) disclosed $518 million of infrastructure funding it will give to universities across the country. Some of these projects have direct applications to space exploration, while others might be repurposed for astronauts and astronomy once the work becomes a little more advanced.
CFI’s mandate is to help large Canadian institutions increase their capability for research, including technology development and research infrastructure. Such basic research funding is a needed boost for long-range space exploration technology projects that may require decades of funding to become viable for the market. It also allows teams to create things and adjust them ahead of a possible spaceflight or possible commercialization.
One of the top-tier engineering changes in the last few years has been the advent of “additive manufacturing” for everything from rockets to small tools on the space station. Astronauts on the International Space Station have access to multiple 3D printers that allow them to make things on the fly to meet their needs, rather than necessarily waiting around for a shipment from the ground – which could take months.
Both York University and Western University collaborated on a $9 million project concerning “intelligent additive manufacturing” for space exploration, funded by CFI. The team’s goal is to make additive manufacturing even more efficient so that we can use it even more in space, especially in environments with regolith (moon or Mars) or with available metal (dead satellites).
“If you’re 3D printing it, you only need to carry the raw materials. They take up less volume and also less mass,” York University mechanical and space engineer Zheng Hong (George) Zhu said in a CFI statement. “If you can print it by recycling materials from space debris, you can further cut the launch costs,” he added.
Another big win for astronomy is funding for the Canadian Hydrogen Observatory and Radio transient Detector (CHORD) project, deemed a priority in the Canadian Astronomical Society/ Société Canadienne d’Astronomie (CASCA)’s long-range plan released last December. The $9 million in CFI funding will go to McGill University and the University of Toronto to further plans to deploy a Canadian telescope that will observe the universe in radio wavelengths. (With the loss of the Arecibo Observatory in 2020, the need for more radio receivers is urgent.)
Moving to the realm of autonomous monitoring, a $3.5 million project for Dalhousie University and University of Newfoundland deploys sensors across the northwest of the north Atlantic Ocean. The floating devices, called Argos, are battery-powered and can adjust their buoyancy by themselves. “They carry miniaturized sensors and relay their measurements in real time via satellite telemetry,” the project website reads, saying that adding more sensors to the program is an ongoing project.
Admittedly, the stretch of space exploration applications is so vast that almost any of the other CFI projects can be related to space innovation in some way. A few examples are listed below.
A common health link for astronauts in space is relations to seniors and to diseases that may affect people more as they age; astronauts face many of the same issues when they need to get used to gravity again. The University of Montreal has two CFI investigations focused on neurodevelopment: a survey of neurodevelopment and mental health across age, genes and environment ($2.9 million) and (with McGill University) a $3.1 million investigation concerning neurodevelopment of nervous system disorders. NASA is also interested in neuroscience,
Examinations concerning fundamental particles can be applied to our understanding of the universe. CFI has many investigations funded targeting tiny particles in this round, but a single example in this field is a “next generation” liquid argon dark matter detector that would be deployed in SNOLAB, an underground facility near Sudbury, Ont. that investigates fundamental particles. Dark matter makes up much of our universe and is still poorly understood, despite decades of study. The $6.9 million project is from Carleton University, in collaboration with the University of Alberta and Queen’s University.
Advanced materials investigations (of which there are many CFI funded) can be applied to fields such as spacecraft or rocket design, where engineers are always looking for stronger yet lighter materials that can stand up to the stresses of launching and spaceflight. McMaster University and Université du Québec, for example, each have projects related to nanomanufacturing (for $2.1 million and $3.2 million, respectively.) Future space projects may benefit from nanotechnology initiatives such as “smart materials” made for a specific function, more sensitive sensors or electronic devices – and nanotechnology has been tested on the space station before, too.
Several climate change projects are also on tap, including the Baffin Island Environmental Research Stations from Université Laval, Université du Québec à Rimouski, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières that received $7 million in CFI funding. While not all climate projects are related to space exploration, northern regions generally depend on satellite monitoring or satellite relaying of data to keep track of the rapid pace of climate change within that region, especially for the protection of Indigenous populations. A brief description of the project says that it will monitor wildlife and flora in that region, both in sea regions and in land regions.