Grants and Contributions

The Arctic region is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet and the role of clouds on the radiation budget still remains largely uncertain, especially in winter when the Arctic atmosphere is understudied. A wide range of
factors could contribute, such as cloud phase (ice, liquid, mixed), cloud height and thickness, and atmospheric aerosol particles. The proposed research would work towards closing these gaps by characterizing clouds, snowfall, and aerosols in the Arctic winter as part of the POlar Night EXperiment, an aircraft and ground-based campaign that will take place in Inuvik, NT in January 2026. Cloud properties and precipitation rates will be related to atmospheric conditions such as temperature and moisture. The expected outcomes will be an improved understanding of the conditions that lead to clouds and snowfall in this understudied season of the Arctic.

The goal of the project are to investigate ground- and satellite-based aerosol remotely sensed (RS) data along with aerosol simulations to analyze and contextualize the aerosol data acquired by onboard sensors during the PONEX (POlar Night EXperiment) airborne mission that will fly out of Inuvik, NT in January of 2026 (aerosols being airborne particles of dust, pollution, sea-salt etc. ). Regional contextualization provides critical redundancy as well as complementary information to any given aerosol or aerosol-cloud event detected by the suite of PONEX sensors. The output product will, in general, be a significantly more insightful understanding of PONEX aerosol measurements.

This project will advance the use of additively manufactured functionally graded materials (FGMs) for space mobility applications, focusing on liquid propulsion systems for reusable launch vehicles and spacecraft. The research is crucial for enhancing Canada's space industry capabilities and competitiveness in the global market. The project's main objectives include investigating FGM properties, optimizing additive manufacturing techniques, designing and fabricating key engine components, and conducting empirical hot fire tests to validate the improvements. Expected outcomes include improved engine performance and significantly reduced manufacturing time and costs, leading to a much more competitive space propulsion engine to commercialize on the global market. Benefits to the Canada include job creation of 30-40 highly qualified personnel hired within 5 years post-project. The project will strengthen Canada's expertise in advanced materials and manufacturing for space applications, leading to technology transfer in other sectors such as aerospace, energy, and automotive industries.

Well-calibrated atmospheric radiance measurements contain rich information of atmospheric states for remote sensing applications and can be used as a reference dataset for comparing newly developed satellite instruments. This project aims to deploy a ground-based high-resolution infrared spectrometer, Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI), to the PONEX campaign and to use its measurements with high accuracy to validate the measurements of other radiometers and compare their atmospheric sounding abilities.

The "Logistics and Data Collection for Collaborative Ground-based Measurements in Support of the Arctic Polar Night Experiment (PONEX) Campaign” project will collect measurements of atmospheric gases, particles, winds, temperature and precipitation over Inuvik, NT (86N, 133 W) in January 2026 using instruments based at the Inuvik Airport and at Trail Valley Creek. These measurements will be used, as part of the Arctic POlar Night EXperiment (PONEX) field campaign, to better understand and model the atmosphere during polar night. They will also be used to assess measurements from Earth Observing satellites and research aircraft. The team located on-site in Inuvik will include students and young researchers from three Canadian universities, who will gain valuable skills and enhance their career training through this campaign experience.

This project will contribute to the Arctic POlar Night EXperiment (PONEX) campaign, which is a sub-orbital component of the Canadian Space Agency’s High-altitude Aerosols, Water vapour and Clouds (HAWC) mission. PONEX will involve a coordinated ground-based and aircraft field campaign in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, in January 2026 and will be the first such campaign to employ aircraft during polar night. This project will support two trainees, who will participate in the deployment, operation, and data analysis of two of the ground-based instruments: a scanning Doppler Lidar and a Water Vapour Lidar, both provided by Environment and Climate Change Canada. These instruments will measure vertical wind profiles, cloud base heights, planetary boundary layer heights, aerosol backscatter profiles, and water Docusign Envelope ID: F463D985-E1B1-4924-AD6E-88066E1BE7B5 vapour profiles. These measurements, in combination with other PONEX ground-based and aircraft datasets, will be used to undertake science investigations in support of the HAWC scientific objectives.

CTA is a non-profit of Canada with expertise in semi-active suspensions systems and advanced engineering for mobility. This project’s objective is to deliver an innovative damper design for wheeled extraterrestrial vehicles, using friction that can be modulated. This system replaces traditional fluid based damper elements that are not well suited for the harsh condition of space exploration. By using algorithms to modulate friction in real-time as a function of inputs such as speed, the system can improve the mobility of rovers, allow operation at faster speeds and improve systems lifespan. The project includes detailed design, manufacturing and characterization of a damper prototype in a laboratory. The disruptive technology could position Canada as a leader in advanced rover mobility, filling an important technological gap that overly complicated smart suspensions seem to overlook.

The HAWC satellite mission, currently under development, plans to place into orbit three Canadian atmospheric observation instruments, including TICFIRE, a radiometer designed to capture radiances emitted toward space in the thermal infrared and far-infrared. One of the first steps in processing TICFIRE data will be to classify the observed atmospheric scenes, which may consist of clear sky, aerosols, ice clouds, liquid clouds, or mixed-phase clouds. Measurements collected during the PONEX campaign by the FIRR-2 instrument, a precursor to TICFIRE, will be used to develop and evaluate artificial intelligence algorithms for atmospheric scene classification. This type of algorithm, which allows for the consideration of a wide range of variables affecting infrared emissions, is currently being considered in several satellite missions as a replacement for traditional classification approaches based on threshold systems using a limited number of variables.

The Polestar payload aims to address outstanding questions on the mechanism of space anemia. Polestar will test three key hypotheses: 1. Older red blood cells (RBC) are preferentially destroyed in space; 2. Space can induce a shift from adult to fetal hemoglobin; and 3. Space induces RBC morphological changes, causing RBC dysfunction. Using blood and air samples collected from the SpaceX Polaris Dawn five-day mission, Polestar will measure the effect of high-altitude space and space radiation on space hemolysis in four astronauts compared to four age-related and sex-matched ground controls. Polestar will investigate the subpopulation of hemolyzed RBCs, hemoglobin gene-switching, and RBC anomalies, using state-of-the-art methods often applied for the first time to space samples. Polestar leverages private space missions to speed up critical space life science advances.

Observations of cloud shapes and motions can constrain different processes that contribute to the weather on Mars, many of which also operate on the Earth. Observing the motions and variations in the quantity of dust in the atmosphere with height and location within Gale can provide a better understanding atmospheric mixing close to the surface driven by solar heating. These particles affect the amount of ultraviolet radiation within the crater, therefore, studying UV at Gale provides more detail on the seasonal cycle and the nature of Martian dust and cloud at the scale of individual particles. Lastly, this improved understanding of weather may help explain observed variations in the amount of methane and whether the source of that methane is small and local, or is carried into the crater from a larger, distant source.