Starting this winter, Canadians are going to have a new pathway into the space sector, as the newly-formed North American Space Institute (NASI) welcomes its first cohort of aspiring space technicians this coming January.
Founded by former Canadian Space Agency (CSA) technologist Michael Graham earlier this year, the Institute aims to become “the national platform building Canada’s certified space workforce.” Their site mentions several different courses related to space sector, but the most notable is their Space Systems Technician program, which is Canada’s first space technician program certified by the Canadian Council for Aviation and Aerospace (CCAA).
SpaceQ reached out to Graham about NASI and that certification, and he gave details in a phone interview earlier this week.
Hands-on at the Canadian Space Agency
Graham explained the reason for opening the school by drawing on his own background in the space sector.
As a point of fact, he hadn’t originally planned on joining it in the first place. Prior to his work at the CSA he was an entrepreneur working in production and fabrication, but found himself in a situation where he “had two companies … [and was] working 20 hours a day, seven days a week.” Not great when you’re also trying to maintain a solid work life balance.
Seeking out a “regular job” with less grueling hours, he signed up to interview at the CSA’s David Florida Laboratory (DFL), and got hired because he was a technician who was “a young guy, and I was there and willing.” The need for technicians, he said, appeared fairly dire; “everyone there was retiring,” and he quickly realized that he “probably the junior by 25-30 years.”
Graham was hired at the lab. He began working with DFL’s thermal vacuum chambers, learned the job, and eventually ended up taking shifts running the chamber that was performing testing on Canadian components for the James Webb Space Telescope. Much of his training on how to handle this kind of intensive task, however, was the kind of informal on-the-job training that came from his willingness to “hang around for 20 hours at a time, most of it for free.”
But Graham also learned that his hands-on and informal training experience wasn’t unique, and that “the tech process was actually not that long [to learn] if you took it as serious training.” People with a variety of educational backgrounds would need to learn these kinds of technical skills to work in the lab, and the time to get that done could be dramatically reduced if training were made more structured and efficient.
So Graham worked with others at the DFL to develop a more coherent training program that was, he said, “basically an apprenticeship program,” and eventually became the program’s first graduate.
Standards for space technicians
Graham discovered that he really enjoyed that kind of work. He said “I was just really good at understanding the process and writing it down, and honestly…[it] was one of my favorite things to do.”
So when he left the CSA and moved into the private sector, Graham started talking with companies in the space sector about the issue, and discovered that ensuring space SMEs could hire ready-to-go space technicians was a much broader problem that he could help contribute to solving.
“I kept hearing from my clients,” Graham said, that “it was difficult to find people to start right away.” While a government agency or a large corporation can take time to train people, startups and SMEs “just don’t have the capital outlay to wait for them to learn,” Graham said, and that was the genesis of the idea of creating the occupational standard.
At the time, Graham was working with Algonquin College mechanical engineering students, and was aware of their Aviation Tech course that was licensed through the CCAA. So, he thought, “there should be a space version of this,” especially with regards to helping people with skills in the trades that may want to transition to helping with the space economy. The third party certification would also make it more universally applicable than a training course that’s predicated on a particular company’s perspective and methods, broadening the hireability of the students and the talent pool available to employers.
Iain Christie* (one of the instructors at NASI) connected him with contacts at the CCAA, and they agreed to work together on developing the Space Technician standard alongside people at Kepler Communications. The occupational standard was finished this March, and a summary is now available on the CCAA website.
Training technicians
The question still remained, however, of how to train these new technicians. Graham’s initial idea was to work with Algonquin College on developing a related program. Graham said that the program was actually approved, but the recent drop in international student enrollment rates meant that “there was no more funding … even approved programs got frozen indefinitely.”
That’s when he connected with Aaron Topple, NASI’s now-COO. Topple learned about Graham’s work on the occupational standard, and (Graham said) reached out by email to see if they could collaborate. In an email to SpaceQ, Topple said that “Mike and I [were] looking to solve the workforce problem from separate approaches,” and that once they were introduced he saw an opportunity to combine these approaches..
Graham came to Toronto in late 2024 to meet Topple and now-CTO Dave Senior Jr., where Graham unleashed “a fire hose of stuff I had been working on and how it all fit together” on a whiteboard at York University.
“We decided to start a company” to address the training issue, Graham said, and the people in that room started NASI in March/April, shortly after the CCAA occupational standard was finished. Current CMO Mahfuz Chowdhury joined later on.
And while “we’ve been weirdly going fast and slow at the same time,” he said, “we seem to get adoption wherever we go.”
NASI’s opening cohort and classes
Graham said that “with the limited resources of a startup, I’m reluctant to get out over my skis,” so NASI is starting out with a focused set of offerings and a comparatively small initial cohort.
At the moment, NASI is offering four main types of classes. The first, the Space Systems Technician program, is the one that’s connected to the CCAA accreditation. The course is split into two components: A 56-hour virtual learning component that can be done remotely and largely at students’ own pace, with the goal of passing written tests on a variety of performance objectives; And 52 hours of in-person mandatory practical training that takes place on-site at partner facilities across Canada.
The courses will be taught by Graham and Topple.
While the curriculum is still in active development, it’s focused on fulfilling the various aspects of the SST occupational standard: which includes understanding safety and environmental requirements, quality assurance, and security protocols; as well as how to assemble, maintain and operate equipment,set up and conduct testing, and assist in project planning and resource management.
Graham said that he expects the course to take “nominally around 15 to 18 weeks … that’ll depend on the scheduling of the [practical instruction] facilities”. “It’ll also depend on the students,” he said, and how quickly they progress through the virtual learning sessions. Even so, he feels that “it’s going to be a relatively intense process.”
As to the size of the opening cohort, Graham’s deliberately trying to keep it somewhat limited so that they can iron out any issues. While they’re still in the process of working out how many students there will actually be, he said that he expects “somewhere around 10 to 15” in the January cohort.
For the followup cohort, likely starting in June, they’re looking to have “closer to 30 to 50 or so.” He said that “I’m generally trying to align it for the end of natural semesters in college and university.”
As the students are likely going to be spread across Canada, NASI also needs to ensure that facilities are located in reasonable distance from the students, and Graham said that they’re working on that.
That said, college students are only one group that NASI expects to be bringing in. Graham said that the main theory they’re working with is that there will be three main groups: soon-to-be-grads and new grads, people already in the space sector who want to reskill or upskill—much like those scientists and engineers at the DFL—and people in academia who are just interested in learning this side of space.
The exact distribution of these people is one of the things they’ll be keeping a close eye on as they continue to develop the courses.
NASI’s other courses
While the bulk of the attention is on the SST course, there are three other coursework tracks that are being pursued by NASI right now. While Graham didn’t comment on these programs, there’s still some information available on the offerings.
The first program, Custom Employer Training, is aimed at helping space-sector employers “recruit, train, and retain certified professionals aligned with operational needs.” In addition to connecting employers with certified technicians—presumably through the SST program—NASI is also looking to help existing workers improve on their skillset, offering to help employers “partner with NASI to create tailored upskilling programs for your teams, from new hires to technical leads.” They also offer “strategic talent development” and “access to national talent pipelines.”
Graham and Christie will be providing instruction for these employer training courses.
The second offering, Introduction to Space Systems, is an “immersive one-day workshop.” The goal is to “help students, early professionals, and curious minds get a clear, tactile understanding of how the space sector works, and where they could fit within it,” giving them “perspective, hands-on exposure, and a structured entry point into one of the world’s most dynamic industries.”
Workshop participants will, according to NASI, “understand how satellites, subsystems, and orbital mechanics function in real missions,” and “learn how real missions navigate ambiguity using systems thinking and strategic frameworks like Cynefin” as well as “participate in cleanroom simulations and explore real hardware workflows used across the industry.” Graham will be leading the workshops.
Finally, Iain Christie will be running three-day Leading Through Complexity workshops. This particular course is focused on “strategic leadership” in the space sector, and is intended to “equip professionals with the tools to manage uncertainty, guide teams, and build clarity in fast-moving systems.”
According to NASI, Christie’s approach in the workshop will be based on the Cynefin decision-making framework, and will help participants “learn to assess risk, ambiguity, and complexity,” and “gain planning and communication techniques that work across roles and functions,” as well as building “[their] ability to lead through change, uncertainty, and pressure. Participants will receive a certification after completing the course.”
Graham said that there are other offerings planned for the course stack, but that he has “nothing I can disclose yet,” until the courses are further along in development.
* Full disclosure: Iain Christie is a freelance columnist to SpaceQ and did not contribute to nor was he interviewed for this article.