One of Canada’s astronauts is asking researchers to provide their ideas for potential future suborbital research flights.
Jenni Sidey-Gibbons made the virtual call Wednesday (Nov. 18) at the annual Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute’s ASTRO conference.
“There’s no concrete opportunity as of yet, but I think that this is a niche area where Canada could really excel,” she said. “The purpose of today is to enable discussion in order to get these programs going at the Canadian Space Agency, and provide them for you.”
Sidey-Gibbons said the CSA’s goal is to understand what the community’s needs are, and what kind of research researchers are doing, so as to consider how to frame potential opportunities. The astronaut added that she has been fortunate to participate in parabolic flights during her own time as a student at McGill University, through the National Research Council’s Falcon 20 aircraft, “which was an amazing opportunity for someone to get their feet wet in research.”
Sidey-Gibbons said that as a young researcher, the flight ended up being fundamental for her career as it introduced her to the wider world of research opportunities within Canada’s space sector. As it turned out, she ended up being an astronaut shortly after receiving her Ph.D.
“My career kind of came full circle because during my [astronaut] basic training, I was able to train on that same aircraft, the Falcon 20, with the exact same research pilots – I remember them well,” she noted. Sidey-Gibbons and fellow astronaut candidate (now full astronaut) Joshua Kutryk were testing medical devices on that flight, which she noted is a common application of microgravity research more generally.
“Not only do we learn a lot about microgravity and space exploration, but we also are able to study phenomenon which would be difficult or really not noticeable on the surface of the Earth,” she noted, naming fields such as crystal growth, microfluidics combustion (her area of expertise), heat transfer, how to grow plants, and medical research.
Sidey-Gibbons pointed to Canada’s long history of doing microgravity research in medicine, most recently highlighted by the 2018-19 flight of David Saint-Jacques who tested devices such as the Astroskin, which measures heart rate and other basic health metrics autonomously.
“Their experiments help us understand how our bones or blood vessels, and our heart and our muscles, change when we are in space for a long period of time … and how we adapt when we get back to Earth,” Sidey-Gibbons said.
“But they also help us understand things like how populations age on Earth, which is very similar to how the bodies of astronauts change when they’re in space. How to provide medical kits for remote regions in Canada – particularly the north of Canada, which is a big problem that we continue to face. How to pioneer new technologies like more efficient drug delivery.”
Sidey-Gibbons said the CSA is looking for “good tradeoffs” between the cost of an experiment and the “quality” of microgravity, which varies depending on the experiment. The ISS is of course the ultimate in microgravity research for the long term, but very expensive. On Earth, microgravity research can range from sounding rockets to drop towers to parabolic aircraft.
“I think – this is me speaking personally – suborbital flights really provide very high quality microgravity comparable with what’s on the ISS,” Sidey-Gibbons argued, as having up to four minutes at a time available for microgravity research is “a pretty big chunk of time” but at a cost affordable for research grants.
There also is a quick turnaround time available, as researchers can access payloads within minutes of landing, and the “cadence” or number of flights is frequent. While providers such as Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin also have microgravity opportunities, suborbital space would increase the cost (estimated at $100,000 USD or $126,000 CAD), decrease the turnaround time and – at least for the time being – have a reduced cadence compared to suborbital flights.
Future suborbital research opportunities
While the CSA is still working on ideas for suborbital flight, she pointed to the CSA’s Space Capacity Development Program that supports activities from “idea to innovation”, meaning from pre-mission research to flight demonstration. The program has the aim of increasing market readiness of devices or research technologies. Current programs Sidey-Gibbons mentioned include access to Stratos (a French stratospheric balloon) and Canada’s ongoing CubeSat Project for students.
Sidey-Gibbons also held a question-and-answer session in which she clarified some of the following things:
- There are no specifics yet on provider, although the CSA has a memorandum of agreement with “potential providers.”
- Payload sizing will likely be at least the size of a shoebox, but perhaps as large as three to four times a shoebox size.
- Power needs are still being discussed with the companies, but “they’re able to support pretty high wattage experimental loads” for experiments.
- Floating payloads may be approved if there are “humans in the loop”, although this depends on the nature of the experiment and whether it meets other safety needs.
- There may be both pressurized and unpressurized opportunities available, depending on what the community wants.
People wishing to send their feedback can use the address asc.demonstrationdetechnologies-technologydemonstration.csa@canada.ca to reach CSA officials.