Ottawa, ON – There were several themes and one funding announcement from Canadian Space Agency (CSA) president Lisa Campbell as she addressed a largely industry crowd at the annual SpaceBound conference organized by Space Canada.
The themes, as you would expect, reflect the new Liberal government’s messaging on sovereign capability, defence, the arctic, and buy Canadian.
Export more, buy Canadian
The buy Canadian message isn’t new but the strong push on space defence is, while there’s also a greater emphasis on buy Canadian.
In indirectly addressing the issue of tariffs Campbell said, “Like most other countries, the Canadian Space Agency’s space procurements are exempt from international trade agreements. This has allowed us—because there’s a recognition it’s a high-investment, high-risk sector that needs protection domestically—and this has allowed us, through deliberate industrial policy, to become the best in the world in key areas. But there’s so much more that we can do together.”
Those areas include communication, robotics, and Earth observation sensors to name a few. Tariffs in the space sector while not a serios problem at this point could be an issue at anytime with the shifting polices coming from the U.S. government. It is that uncertainty that is pushing Canada to look to other markets. Later at the conference Industry Minister Joly announced a major initiative that would allow companies to participate to a greater extent with the European Space Agency by providing $528.5 million in new funding. There is one caveat to the announcement at the moment. We don’t when the funds will be available and what time period this covers.
Defence cooperation
As a civil space agency, the CSA has to find its path in what is a large push now, including funding, going to Canada’s space defence efforts. This means greater co-operation with other departments which she discussed.
“With our partners—with the Department of National Defence, Canadian Forces, the RCMP, the Communications Security Establishment and many, many more—we are planning the development and commercialization of dual-settlement military technologies.”
The cooperation between departments has been ongoing at different levels for years but a new National Space Council, with more senior representation, was established last year. However, since the Council was established there has been no news and the webpage on the CSA website was removed. Before the conference we enquired with the CSA as to what, if anything, the council had been doing. We were informed that indeed it has been meeting regularly. “The CSA and the Department of National Defence (DND) co-lead an ADM (Assistant Deputy Minister) / VP-level committee on space that meets regularly to coordinate federal efforts, advance shared priorities and address cross-cutting issues that span commercial, civil, and defence domains.”
Another duty of the National Space Council is to meet with stakeholders. At the time of its creation the government said it will send invitations to those that will be selected to participate. How many stakeholders get to participate is information that was not released. And those selected will participate in “select meetings” with “the Assistant Deputy Minister/Vice President, Deputy Head and Ministerial level.” This has not happened as yet.
A CubeSat announcement
In Campbell’s short keynote (15 minutes) she did make an announcement. The CSA awarded a contract worth $6.9 million to Magellan Aerospace for a technology demonstration mission headed to the moon. This will be the first satellite Canada sends to the moon.
The CSA said the CubeSat will be “equipped with a multispectral imager to create a detailed resource map of the lunar surface” and will have a “software package that will use data from the imager to test a novel lunar positioning algorithm” and an impact payload that will demonstrate “technology designed to impact the lunar surface at high velocity to provide insight into the physical and mechanical properties of the regolith (Moon soil).”