OTTAWA – Hundreds of people gathered at NordSpace’s Canadian Space Launch Conference in Ottawa on Tuesday (May 5), including several key players in the Canadian space industry.
As many attendees noted, 2026 is an exciting year due to historic government investments in Canadian space launch as well as the recent, successful completion of Artemis II’s Canadian mission around the Moon.
But attendees also voiced expectations about what Canada’s space industry should do next, after being handed money and a historic mission shining the spotlight on a community that does not always have such attention.
In a series of keynotes, several medium-sized Canadian companies (and a key industry organization) talked about how they plan to build on the opportunity. Here are brief highlights from those speeches at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum.
Rahul Goel, NordSpace CEO
Goel spoke on the theme “Building a Spacefaring Nation: NordSpace’s Updates and Vision for Canada’s Future in Space.”
He paid tribute to the success of SpaceX and Rocket Lab, which he said not only built launch vehicles, but also focused on infrastructure and sustainable companies to sustain those vehicles — making valuable companies in the meantime.
Goel said that pathway should be a good model to follow for NordSpace, and for other companies like it, as NordSpace aims to make its first sovereign launch from Newfoundland and Labrador later this year. He did not offer a date for the new launch but said “we’re going to be back on the pad very soon” after several launch attempts did not go through last year due to weather and tech issues. In the meantime, this is NordSpace’s 10-year plan.
- Phase 1: Pathfinder missions, self-funded, in which they deploy their own technology and finances for work such as experimental rocket development, satellite development, robotics and manufacturing.
- Phase 2: Scaling the space system division and advancing milestones for the Launch the North competition, for which NordSpace was among the three selectees. Deploying small satellite platforms at scale for hosted payloads and small constellations. Increasing revenues.
- Phase 3: Conversion of their space systems and rocket divisions, in an effort to deploy constellations with a cost structure “that nobody else can compete with, other than vertically integrated companies.”
NordSpace anticipates scaling to at least 230 people in the near future, in large part due to work at its Advanced Manufacturing for Aerospace Lab announced last October, where it will eventually aim to build satellite constellations and advanced structures.
NordSpace also announced new investments and projects:
- Two additional companies are funded under their new venture arm: Volta Space Technologies, and North Vector Dynamics.
- NordSpace received a $10 million investment for Phase 2 of the Atlantic Spaceport Complex, with more details coming in a few weeks.
- NordSpace received an $8 million investment for advanced manufacturing, with more details coming in the next few weeks.
- The company said it plans to fly a lunar rover called TERRY (after Terry Fox, the noted marathoner and activist for cancer research), with launch set for NET 2027.
Brian Gallant, Space Canada CEO
Gallant spoke on the theme “Strengthening Canada’s Space Sector.” Gallant said he is “really excited”, especially because “there is economic opportunity in space again.” While many in the audience knew that, he emphasized repeating the message to others is key: “It’s probably the one that resonates with Canadians the most, maybe even decision-makers.”
But the ground has been shifting, he said: geopolitical dynamics with the U.S., NASA pausing its Gateway program (affecting international partners, including Canada) and commercial industry seeing hundreds of millions of dollars fundraised repeatedly for U.S. companies alone on the strength of space data centres and Golden Dome discussions.
So Canada, Gallant said, should also be looking for how to shift while keeping its core priorities consistent: sovereignty, the environment, Indigenous affairs, and the North. “This reorientation is not about moving away from past priorities,” he said, emphasizing it’s more about adapting them to the tone of the new conversation.
This will especially be true when entering trade discussions with the U.S. in the coming months. He said the role of defence in space will be at the heart of the discussions, but allied industries such as energy and transportation should also be cited. There also is the aspect of commercialization serving as a pipeline for talent and the supply chain, on both sides of the border (as many Canadian companies work in the U.S., and vice versa).
Looking beyond the U.S., Gallant said Canadian companies need clear government investment, and sustained funding at that. International companies have larger markets and access to deeper domestic pools of cash, he said. While Gallant acknowledged the Canadian government has made “lots of moves and investments” in recent months, a lot of it is in catch-up.
Already, Gallant said, there is an incentive to spend more: not only because Canada would benefit from it, but because the new NATO ask is for 5% of GDP from each country to be provided in defence. Space, he noted, could be a big part of that. “If we act together today, I’m convinced that we can have not only Canada participate thoughtfully in the global sector … but I believe Canada can shape it,” he said.
Melissa Quinn, Maritime Launch Services VP of spaceport operations, who is on secondment from MDA Space
Quinn spoke on the theme “Spaceports & Rockets: Canada’s New Critical Infrastructure.”
Quinn, who is serving on secondment from MDA Space as part of its MLS investment, serves as an interesting example of how to bring international launch experience into Canada.
When she was announced in her MLS role earlier in the year, this is how the company described her work: “Ms. Quinn previously served as Head of Spaceport at Spaceport Cornwall in the United Kingdom, where she led the successful delivery of facilities and operations that enabled the UK’s first licensed orbital launch attempt. Her work included securing the first-ever UK spaceport license, achieved through extensive regulatory coordination, sustainability planning, and deep community engagement.”
Quinn told attendees at the conference that her time in Cornwall, and 17 years in the U.K. more generally, helped her learn how to “reframe” how to think about launch. “It isn’t just about the capability. It is not just a product. It’s not just like a stamp of ‘Hey, you’re in a cool club. Now you can launch into space.’ No, it is a piece of foundational, critical, national infrastructure.”
Spaceports, she continued, are as essential to industry as an airport, or a train station, because each spaceport also serves a role of moving goods and people around. And being such a nascent industry, spaceports also present an opportunity: they allow governments to define their future in the economy, instead of having to accommodate for infrastructure that is already there.
Quinn said that there are many factors that need to line up for success, however. More investment from both public and private coffers are required in Canada to scale up closer to counterparts like the U.S., because ironically, U.S. investment is underpinning a lot of the Canadian space industry right now (even as sovereign discussions are increasing, she said.)
From a brief stay at Slingshot Aerospace, which does situational awareness in space, Quinn added the sovereignty threat is real: “We could see some pretty scary stuff happening in space,” is what she heard from one of her colleagues while she was working there. The discussion helped her understand “how critical it is to be able to control, and replace, our assets” not only for investment purposes, but for deterrent purposes.
Ewan Reid, Mission Control CEO
Reid spoke on the theme “Beyond Low-Earth Orbit: What Sovereign Space Launch Can Unlock for Canada’s Share of the Lunar Economy.”
Reid, who attended the Artemis II launch in Florida, called the mission “an incredible, incredible moment of Canadian pride.” By coincidence, Space Symposium happened in Colorado Springs in the days after the mission concluded. “It was noticeable that Canadians were walking around with a kind of swagger, with a kind of confidence, and rightly so,” Reid observed. “You know, we made it.”
But with arrival comes more ambition, he noted. Reid, whose company works in many fields including rovers, says he “genuinely believes in exploration. I think robots are incredible at repetitive, dirty, and dangerous tasks, but when it comes to true exploration, the expansion of knowledge and understanding, that really comes – and only comes – with humans.”
The race to the Moon includes a component of “flag-waving”, he acknowledged, but also “compelling economic and strategic reasons to be active in what will quickly become an emerging lunar economy.” Canada’s early participation in the Artemis Accords will likely allow the country to continue having a voice in how the architecture is shaped, Reid said, and perhaps Artemis II backup astronaut Jenni Gibbons would be able to walk on the Moon.
Part of that architecture will be the lunar utility rover, which will be a sort of a moveable logistics platform that Canada is planning to contribute to the program as soon as 2033. Several entities are working under early-stage contracts for that program: ABB Inc., Bubble Technology Industries, Mission Control, and Western University.
Reid said the rover will be essential to move the hundreds of tons of payload expected to arrive on the surface via the Human Landing Systems sent by SpaceX, Blue Origin, or both. “That’s where decades of Canadian experience, constructing and assembling the International Space Station, will come,” Reid said, pointing to the long-running Canadarm program’s role in doing so.
The challenge, however, will be doing so at a cadence that the newer NASA leadership wants. Administrator Jared Isaacman has challenged American industry to deliver payloads to the Moon every month, he said. In real numbers, Reid said, that would be on the order of 38 tons of cargo per year by 2032, if predictions come to pass. While that amount may not be achieved immediately, “the message is clear, right? They are going to ramp up.”
Reid said that a program like the Canadian Space Agency’s Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program is a good, sovereign example of how to move quickly and to accept a level of risk in supporting early-stage programs, which he said could serve as a model for sovereign launch.
“It opened doors that we simply wouldn’t have had access to,” he said of the program. Reid acknowledged that Mission Control’s software did not ultimately reach the Moon successfully on the ispace landing mission in 2023 (for reasons outside the company’s control), but Mission Control is already working on more projects.
“We’ve proven that the government and industry can work together to move fast, and to take risk, and ultimately send things to the Moon.”