NorthStar Earth & Space will get advisory support and up to $2 million from Canada’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) to build a new line of satellite-tracking sensors, the Montreal company said in a release Sept. 4.
NorthStar provides space domain awareness (SDA), the tracking and cataloguing of objects in orbit, to commercial and defence customers. The IRAP funding, run through the National Research Council, comes with technical advice from an adviser.
The funding backs a modular sensor design meant to fly on almost any host satellite, including telecommunications constellations, rather than only on purpose-built spacecraft of NorthStar’s own. Luqia, the Montreal-Quebec City lab formed this year from the merger of two federal research institutes, is a subcontractor on the project, contributing sensor and payload design.
IRAP contributions are non-repayable and reimbursed against project milestones rather than paid up front, typically covering up to 80 per cent of an employee’s eligible salary and up to half the cost of subcontracted work such as Luqia’s. NorthStar’s release doesn’t say how its $2 million splits between those categories, or which of IRAP’s funding streams it comes from.
Government disclosure records show an earlier, smaller NRC IRAP contribution to NorthStar — $75,000 in December for a related single-camera tracking project that wrapped up in May.
“With NRC IRAP support, NorthStar is advancing a modular sensor architecture designed to expand SDA capacity and strengthen Canada’s sovereign and allied space security posture,” chief executive Stewart Bain said in the release.
In January, Ottawa carved a $241-million defence-focused stream out of the same IRAP program, part of a larger push to fund technology with both civilian and military uses. NorthStar’s release doesn’t say whether this award draws on it.