Business

The Federal Budget brought a mild surprise and welcome news to the space community in that the government provided a specific funding dollar amount to sustain Canada’s contribution to the International Space Station (ISS) through 2024. The previous government had committed Canada to participating in the ISS through 2024, but had yet to allocate funds to make it happen.

Today’s budget had a little surprise in it. It not only mentioned space, it allocated money for two specific uses.

Since the beginning, man has yearned to venture into the cosmos, which is a difficult achievement without access to space. Such is the attitude and position of Canada within the global space industry.

An internal 2012 federal budget document the Conservative government would not release was released last Friday and posted by the CBC. It details cuts, or cost “saving measures” as the Conservatives called it, to Canada’s space program, that if left in place, could seriously hurt Canada’s space programs.

The International Space Station robotic arm passing the Node 1 hatch on it’s way back from releasing Cygnus.

Speaking to a packed room of 200 stakeholders at the first Canadian SmallSat Symposium organized by the Canadian Space Commerce Association, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) President Sylvain Laporte signalled a new dialogue with stakeholders which is very much in tune with the openness of the new Liberal government.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has released the 2013 State of the Space Sector report. This is the last report that will be using the current methodology. Starting next year the report will use an updated Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) methodology which the CSA contributed to.

The advent of small satellites is not new. For several years small satellites have been on the rise. However, 2015 can be seen as the year small satellite constellations leapt to the forefront of the news with the announcements by OneWeb to launch 900 small satellites and SpaceX to launch up to 4,000 small satellites.