The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is moving forward with HAWCsat, the satellite for Canada’s High-altitude Aerosols, Water vapour and Clouds (HAWC) mission, which would carry two Canadian instruments. The CSA opened bidding Oct. 28 for Phase A, which covers the HAWCsat spacecraft bus and integration.
Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) posted the solicitation of offers on CanadaBuys for the CSA. Offers are due Dec. 7 at 2 p.m. Eastern. The CSA will hold an optional bidders’ conference on Microsoft Teams on Nov. 6.
The CSA opened Phase A bidding in September for the Spatial Heterodyne Observations of Water (SHOW) instrument, a spectrometer that measures water vapour in the upper atmosphere. SpaceQ reported then that a bus and integration tender would follow later in the year.
SFL Missions of Toronto won the Phase 0 concept study of HAWCsat and its Aerosol Limb Imager (ALI) instrument in January 2025, a contract the CSA announced at $1.6 million. ALI looks sideways through the edge of the atmosphere to measure aerosols, the fine particles that wildfires, volcanoes and industry put into the air.
Canada’s third HAWC instrument, Thin Ice Clouds and Far InfraRed Emissions (TICFIRE), would fly on a NASA satellite in the Atmosphere Observing System (AOS), which would study how aerosols, clouds and precipitation interact. ABB and Honeywell’s Canadian operations won $5.4 million in study contracts for TICFIRE in October 2025.
Canada estimated its contribution to AOS at more than $200 million when it joined in 2022, and the mission was then slated to launch in 2028 and 2031. In October 2025, the CSA described AOS as a potential NASA-led mission targeted for launch in 2031 at the earliest.