The Canadian Satellite Design Challenge Receives CSA Grant

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is demonstrating that even as it’s about to name the teams in its own Canadian CubeSat Project, that it’s willing to provide funding to other CubeSat initiatives, in this case the Canadian Space Design Challenge (CSDC).

The Canadian Space Agency has provided a $46,000 grant to the CSDC.

Larry Reeves, President of the CSDC said  “the grant funds will be used specifically for workshops which focus on skills development and mentorship for the participants, which we believe is a unique – and extremely valuable – component of the CSDC.”

Reeves also said the “the CSA has provided outstanding in-kind support from the very beginning of the CSDC, particularly with the use of the David Florida Laboratory spacecraft testing facility, and for providing CSA experts to help mentor the participants in diverse aspects of spacecraft design and testing.”

Recently Reeves was a guest on the SpaceQ podcast where he discussed the Challenge in detail and the CSDC’s relationship with the CSA. You can listen to the conversation below.

In the update on the CSDC website, it states that “for the workshops, the CSDCMS covers travel and accommodation costs for one representative from each team to attend. The attendees then pass on the knowledge gained to their teams, to help build space expertise and capability at all of the participating universities, across the country. The CSDC held a workshop in September at the TRIUMF cyclotron in Vancouver, during which teams subjected cubesat electronic components to a simulated radiation environment which would be encountered in orbit.”

The CSDC is on its fourth competition which began in September, 2016 and involves 14 teams. The winner of the competition will be announced this summer. Reeves and the CSDC are still working on raising funds so that the winning university team can have their satellite fly in space and perform their experiment.