The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is planning a series of “engagement opportunities” with industry in the fall for the Health Beyond Initiative.
The discussions, details of which are forthcoming, will include opportunities for industry to clarify any questions about the initiative, which is firmly focused on deep-space technologies that have may have applicability to people living in “medically isolated communities.” Such individuals may include categories such as housebound seniors, or people in northern Indigenous towns.
Annie Martin, CSA’s portfolio manager for Health Beyond, said feedback will be crucial from Canadian industry in pushing the program forward. “When we design our upcoming funding opportunities, [we’ll ensure] that what we’re doing is aligned with their innovation cycle, so that when we invest for adaptation for space, it has significant impact on the technology they would be commercializing,” she said in an interview.
Previously, the Canadian Space Agency’s Space Technology Development Program issued two requests for proposals in 2018 leading to $1.3 million’s worth of contracts the following year to move forward with deep space healthcare technologies, CSA officials said while pointing to an agency website detailing the various contracts.
“Due to greater physical distances and mission durations as well as communication delays, Canada is currently studying the development of medical systems and support technologies that will increase crew medical autonomy for future deep space human spaceflight missions,” CSA stated on the website.
Health Beyond focuses on developing medical technologies to work in deep space missions. It was funded for $14 million under five years under the larger Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP), which has purse strings of $150 million over half a decade to develop Canada’s participation in the international push for eventual human missions to the moon.
Health Beyond has three main pillars to its initiatives. Moving out of order, the third pillar – engagement – has already been leveraged with more opportunities forthcoming, Martin said there was a virtual colloquium in June with CSA, IRAP (Industrial Research Assistance Program) and industry called “Healthcare Without Boundaries.” The single-day event, according to its description, was meant to “serve as a forum for the research community, industry, government and academia to learn more about the challenges and opportunities within space health innovation ecosystem.”
The first pillar is vision, in which CSA officials work with an advisory council to “identify potential leadership opportunities” where Canadian companies may contribute to space health care, Martin said. On a related note, the CSA is in the early stages of developing a Deep Space Healthcare Challenge and invites industry to comment on that page to align the challenge with the best opportunities for private companies to contribute.
Then the second pillar is technology development; as is usual with large CSA initiatives, the agency is working with different government departments to support industry. A key example is the National Research Council’s IRAP, a key “innovation assistance” program already targeted at working with the small- and medium-sized businesses CSA wants to lure.
Other external partners include Health Canada, and – on an early-stage and informal basis – relationships with other health authorities, including those from Indigenous communities. “There are some that are members of our advisory council, and we’re getting their support also for an upcoming demonstration site,” Martin explained.
Within CSA, Martin’s staff works with the health and life sciences group that often works in astronaut missions (this 2019 announcement of opportunity shows an example). “They are connected with all the researchers and scientists in Canada, so we want to keep that dialogue open,” Martin explained.
International partners also play a role through working groups, particularly NASA, JAXA and ESA, the latter with which CSA has a co-operation agreement. The various space agencies may eventually do a collaboration project for Health Beyond, Martin added.
There is already an open international challenge related to the technology pillar of Health Beyond: the Deep Space Food Challenge, which is an ongoing collaboration between CSA and NASA to develop helpful technologies for Moon bound astronauts or even those working in other distant destinations. The challenge is open for Canadian industry and academia to participate now.
The allocation of responsibilities between CSA and one of its partners is situational to the particular need of a project, Martin said, but as an example the NRC’s IRAP program may assist with technology development. “The Canadian Space Agency identifies the objectives and the milestones, and then the NRC would do the technology-related work,” she said.
Beyond the Earthly benefits, CSA hopes to leverage the results of the Health Beyond Initiative into its international work with NASA to put more Canadians into space beyond the ongoing International Space Station program, which may end in 2024 but could be extended to 2028 or even longer depending on discussions with international partners.
Looking beyond Earth orbit, Canada is one of nearly a dozen signatories under NASA’s Artemis Accords program with various nations to provide hardware and expertise for the Artemis moon-landing program. Canada’s technological participation principally includes the Canadarm3 robotic arm (built by MDA) that will do autonomous repair and monitoring operations aboard the forthcoming Gateway space station in cislunar space. In exchange for Canada’s contributions, NASA offered the CSA an astronaut seat on the Artemis II moon-orbiting mission that may launch as soon as 2023, depending on if NASA maintains the Trump-era 2024 moon-landing deadline. Such arrangements are typical for CSA, which previously received astronaut seats during the shuttle and International Space Station programs for other crucial robotic contributions to NASA’s work, including Canadarm, Canadarm2, Dextre and the Mobile Servicing System.