The Canadian Space Agency’s (CSA) latest announcement of opportunity for the Space Technology Development Program (STDP), dubbed AO-7, includes $16 million of which $2.1 million went to eight companies in the small business section.
Each company in the small business section of the award will receive a non-repayable contributions of up to $250,000 per project. CSA says each project will last up to three years, with economic benefits flowing in five to 10 years.
The recipients and project names were:
- Aerial Vehicle Safety Solutions Inc. ($190,095): Enabling Accurate Landing for CubeSat Re-Entry and Satellite Reusability
- Complex System Inc. ($247,500): Satellite edge analytic platform for scalable AI
- Edgehog Advanced Technologies ($243,830): Development of next-generation anti-reflection nanotexturing on alternative space glass
- Eternal Light Photonics Corp. ($250,000): Laser Development for a Spaceborne Optical Wireless Power Transmission System
- Nüvü Caméras ($250,000): Complementary Metal-oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) Controller for Counting Photons
- Obruta Space Solutions Corp. – Award 1 ($222,398): Computer Vision for Autonomous Spacecraft Docking
- Obruta Space Solutions Corp. – Award 2 ($222,381): Guidance, Navigation, and Control for Autonomous Spacecraft Docking
- Qoherent ($250,000): Machine learning based beamforming algorithms for satellite communications
- TransEON Inc. ($250,000): GaN MOSFET MMICs for Next-Generation Spaceborne RF Applications
“The companies were selected in the same fashion for all the categories of AO-7 … the evaluation process is broken down into pieces,” Philip Melanson, the CSA’s manager of Earth observation technologies, told SpaceQ.
“The first is screening based on eligibility criteria; we make sure that the company or the entity is Canadian. We make sure that it’s an actual R&D [research and development] project. Things like things of that nature. Then we evaluate them based on criteria.”
The criteria, published on the CSA’s website, includes parameters such as these:
- Recipients must be small companies (up to 50 employees) established and operating in Canada. For-profit and not-for-profit organizations are eligible, but not academic institutions. Partnerships are allowed, as long as the partners establish joint and several (solitary) liability in the contribution agreement.
- Projects must aim to support “the strengthening of industrial capabilities (new concepts, products and/or know-how) related to basic R&D of space technologies (space and/or ground segment).” This does not include items supported under other funding opportunities such as medical technologies, Earth observation data, satellite telecommunications data and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).
- Projects must be at Technology Readiness Level 6 or below. Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED) defines Level 6 as “a model or prototype that represents a near desired configuration. Activities include testing in a simulated operational environment or laboratory.
Melanson said once the applications are filed, a committee of three people reviews each one and their feedback is consolidated to make sure their understanding is about the same. “After that, the scores are tallied up and we provide funding to the best proposals,” he said.
All the STDP categories relate back to the CSA’s departmental results framework, specifically Canada’s investments in space to benefit the Canadian economy. “STDP, the program itself ,has been around for close to 20 years now,” he added. “We’ve certainly seen and witnessed the great potential in small businesses, and so we want to make sure that there is an allocation of funds specifically for small businesses because we strongly believe that there’s a lot of growth potential.”
Each STDP project is tracked through a set of “outcome indicators” to see how the technology readiness level changed as a result of the funding, with the eventual outcome aiming to bring the technology into space, Melanson said. The number of students and the number of “highly qualified” people in a project are also counted (generally referring to a person’s level of education, as space is meant to attract people with advanced education.)
STDP is generally awarded once a year, although the pandemic “threw a little curve” in the pacing in recent years and slowed down awards. That said, Melanson said the forecast is for the program to keep going.
Since the number of applications has grown since the program began, to roughly 100 in the most recent AO, “we like to think that the program is quite pertinent.” The CSA also has conversations with industry to ensure the program has relevance, he said, and supports R&D through contractual mechanisms (such as through a statement of work) or through contributions to support “the ideas and projects defined by industry,” he said.