Technology

When the Liberal government announced the Innovation Superclusters Initiative (ISI) with up to $950 million in funds available through 2022, the space community immediately took notice and began scouring the program guide for details. From the get go, one of the biggest challenges would be the meeting the matching fund requirement of the $125-$250 million for each supercluster.

My guest today is Peter Visscher, Chief Technology Officer at Ontario Drive and Gear.

MDA, which had announced in early May the creation of Space Infrastructure Services (SIS) to handle its nascent satellite servicing business, today announced that Finance Technology Leverage LLC would take a majority stake in SIS and that global satellite communications company SES would be its first customer.

On January 14th of this year, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched the first 10 satellites of the Iridium Next satellite constellation. This coming Sunday another SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to launch, with the next 10 satellites in the constellation to be deployed.

Alberta’s first satellite Ex-Alta 1 was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) on April 18 on a cargo resupply spacecraft and on May 26 it was successfully deployed from the ISS.

The Canadian Space Agency issued the expected Space Technology Development Program Industrial Capability – Building Contributions announcement of opportunity (AO) today. 

The Canadian Space Commerce Association has issued a Call for Papers for the 2017 Canadian SmallSat Symposium. The symposium in meant to be an annual event, and this is the second time the CSCA is organizing it.

In the recently announced budget the government had announced $80.9 million in new funding for the Canadian Space Agency over five years. We now know a little more about the projects the funds will go to.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is getting involved with NASA’s annual Space Apps Challenge with a set of challenges of its own for this weekends event in Ottawa, Toronto and Waterloo.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) this morning issued its latest request for proposal (RFP), this time for Development of Enabling Space Technologies. This latest RFP is is part of the Space Technology Development Program geared towards developing priority technologies.