Technology

It seems every couple of years another group comes along claiming they’ll setup a spaceport in Canada with Nova Scotia being the preferred location. The latest is Maritime Launch Services (MLS), a newly registered company in Nova Scotia with roots in the U.S and the Ukraine. What sets it apart from recent previous efforts is the experienced principals involved.

In December we wrote a story about MDA’s subsidiary Space Systems Loral (SSL) in the U.S. winning a long sought after satellite servicing contract with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Yesterday, the NASA Future In-Space Operations weekly telecon provided an update on the evolution of NASA Goddard’s satellite servicing efforts including the Restore-L Mission which will see SSL build the spacecraft bus.

Just before the holidays MDA received a contract from the Canadian Space Agency for which no press release was issued, though it was listed on the government’s  provide Public Works Buy and Sell procurement website.

It seems patience pays off. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) yesterday announced that MDA’s U.S. subsidiary Space Systems Loral (SSL) has won a $127 million contract to develop the Restore-L Spacecraft Bus which will be used to service a government satellite in low earth orbit. According to the NASA press release, SSL “will provide spacecraft bus, critical hardware and services for the development, deployment …

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released details this week of applicants seeking to build a variety of satellite constellations. The most dramatic application came from SpaceX who are looking to build 4,425 small satellites to be used in low earth orbit. From the Canadian perspective, there were two applications, that of Kepler Communications who are based out of Toronto, and Ottawa’s Telesat.

Today the Canadian Space Agency awarded Carré Technologies of Montreal a contract worth as much as $2.4 million over 18 months to continue work on Astroskin, a bio-monitoring system which Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques will use on his six month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is looking to develop and advance two Priority Technologies (PT); Integral field Spectroscopy for Near Infrared (NIR) Wide Field Imaging (PT1) and Radiometric Calibration System for Large Astronomical Focal Plane (PT2), and is offering two contracts valued up to at $1.4 million for PT1 and $600,000 for PT2.

Euronews has published a report for the European Space Agency (ESA) on Canada’s expertise in space robotics. “Robots are an essential companion to mankind in space, and many of the modern-day masters of these robots are to be found in Montreal, home to the Canadian Space Agency.”

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will issue a call for Letters of Intent from post-secondary institutions later this month to develop a CubeSat. The intent is to have one CubeSat built in each province and territory and to have them launched.

MaxQ, which announced in late April it was starting a space accelerator in Kitchener-Waterloo with a first cohort in September, is hosting an Information Day on Monday, July 25th at Communitech where it will be based out of.