Grants and Contributions

Garrow Space Systems is a Canadian start up developing a brand new small propulsion system. Their system will be electrically powered and use less traditional fuels to enable higher efficiency thrust. This unique design will also enable more precise control of spacecraft in low earth orbit and beyond. This is a key technology to enable industry in space on a scale unlike anything we have seen so far. The project is managed by a group of recent graduates and current university students from British Columbia. The team is looking to use their unique skill set enabled by Canadian Space Agency projects such as the Canadian CubeSat Project to advance the Canadian space industry and economy.

This project focuses on the development of an Intelligent Power Switch (Intelligent Switch) for use in stratospheric balloon power sub-systems. The Intelligent Switch will provide autonomous output load protection in both short circuit and over current cases, as well as autonomously shut down during an overvoltage or undervoltage condition. In addition, an integrated telemetry system will provide on demand voltage, current, power and temperature for each switch via a serial interface. The Intelligent Switch will simplify the design of stratospheric balloon power subsystems by integrating autonomous load safety features with telemetry and command via a serial bus interface.

The HiDRON Suborbital Space Plane

Stratodynamics is collaborating with researchers at the University of Waterloo to reengineer their remotely deployed stratospheric glider known as the HiDRON. To date, the record setting HiDRON unmanned aerial system (UAS) has successfully deployed a number of scientific payloads to the stratosphere and back. However, flight in such low density atmosphere is fraught with laminar airflow challenges and control issues.

This collaboration will produce a new iteration of the HiDRON, custom designed for this poorly understood flight regime. The CSA grant will enable development and testing of the airframe at stratospheric altitudes.

The Canadian aviation community will benefit from the aerodynamic advances arising from this collaboration as the altitudinal ceiling of commercial airspace rises closer to near space.

Computer vision (CV) tasks (e.g. image classification and object detection) enable autonomous decision-making for a range of space applications and platforms, such as rovers, landers, and service vehicles, and reduce the workload and risks associated with humans in any decision-making loop. Such applications rely on high-performance Artificial Intelligence (AI) capability.

Recent advancements in AI have leveraged the nearly limitless computational resources of cloud computing, and as such the resultant solutions are not inherently transferrable, or optimally designed, to be hosted onboard satellite platforms which have very constrained resources. This project will develop a reconfigurable AI capability that supports CV tasks and is optimized to be hosted as part of a portable system using hardware with a path to space-qualification. The results of this project will support a range of future scenarios including imaging support for autonomous space vehicle docking, decision support for autonomous probes or landers, autonomous robotic systems, satellite star trackers as well as remote sensing targeting decision support.

Wyvern is developing technology which will enable an optical telescope to unfold in space, allowing to deliver higher quality images of earth from even smaller satellites. Upon deployment from a stowed position, the increased light collecting area of the primary mirror would allow to take images with a higher spectral content. Essentially, it would allow to build an inexpensive satellite with the data performance of a much larger and more expensive one.
Currently, farmers pay significant fees to specialist companies to fly airplanes and drones over their fields to determine crop health and vitality. This would be more convenient and affordable from a satellite platform. Currently there are no satellites that provide fully suitable products. Wyvern is developing a solution that will change this.

Wildfire frequency, size and intensity continues to increase dramatically across the globe with devastating effects upon human life and health, wildlife, the environment, natural resources, air quality and economies. Wildfire management costs rise steadily, but budgets have not kept pace and agencies are frequently overwhelmed.

Thousands of wildfires start each year in Canada. Most are rapidly detected and managed but the remaining, due to limitations in detection methods and complications from other factors, develop into catastrophic blazes and are responsible for 90% of the forested area burned in this country each year. One such wildfire was the Horse River fire of 2016 that devastated Fort McMurray, Alberta and resulted in costs exceeding $9 billion (insured and uninsured). It was not detected until it was 2 hectares (140m by 140m) in size. 4pi Lab, a Calgary-based company, is developing a satellite-based system (EPiC) to detect and geo-locate very small wildfires (~10m) in real-time from space and alert wildfire management agencies across the globe. This will allow for very early wildfire intervention and disaster prevention. 4pi Lab will use the CSA funding to develop EPiC-lite (a ground-based version of the EPiC system) for the purposes of further proving the concept, validating many of the subsystems, techniques and methodologies necessary for space deployment and demonstrating EPiC's effectiveness to wildfire management agencies, policy-makers, stakeholders and investors.

The recent trends in low-cost satellite have supported an increasing large number of small satellites launches such as CubeSat, with 3000 more expected in the next 6 years. Despite sensors capturing objects at sub-meter resolutions, current technology cannot monitor or analyze data continuously or on-board. To support next-generation satellites, we propose developing an effective satellite video generation framework. The framework will be part of a shift in paradigm to on-board artificial intelligence (AI) enabled processing for satellite. We propose to develop new capabilities on CubeSat for optical satellite video. In particular, we propose to 1) overcome the conventional paradigm of requiring a user to request details of a location for tasking and acquisition of data to automatically generate video products based on processing historical data, and 2) demonstrate efficient resource management on-board satellite, and generate or capture video (30 frames per second) only when an object or event occurs.

Complex mirror geometry is common in hyper spectral space telescopes and imaging optics. These complex geometries are required for image correction and, many times, to reduce the size and weight of the instrument. These mirrors are manufactured on high precision single point diamond Computer Numerical Control (CNC) optical fabrication machines. This project will develop higher precision metal mirrors for these applications and will include development of new on machine metrology, analysis, and control capabilities to allow for the manufacture of both ultra high performance telescopes for science missions and high volume production of similar performance Low Earth Orbit (LEO) communication satellite telescopes. Higher precision metal mirrors for communication satellite telescopes will allow B-Con and Canadian instrument integration companies to capitalize on the creation of HQP jobs that the multi billion dollar LEO comms satellite market is expected to generate over the next 5 years.

Inspired by nanotextures in nature, Edgehog utilizes recent advances in material science to increase the efficiency of space solar cells by eliminating the reflected and wasted light from the glass surface. This project addresses material and design considerations for the implementation of Edgehog nanotextured glass in space conditions, including intense thermal and radiation fluctuations. Over the two-year project, Edgehog will perform validation testing for demonstrating the unique suitability of this nanotextured anti-reflection approach for space conditions, a step towards the deployment of space solar panels with record-breaking energy output and alleviating this major constraint in spacecraft design. Not only will this project allow Canada to expand our footprint in the fast-growing space market, but it is also a steppingstone for this Canadian company to accelerate the growth of terrestrial solar adoption and reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world.

Although night environmental conditions can be extreme and fluctuate drastically compared to daytime conditions, for an observation planned months in advance, everything must perform at the expected time.

Up to now, Canada has been ahead of the curve with its unrivalled capability in ultra-sensitive imaging thanks to the Nüvü Cameras and this work will expand its ability to support detectors under difficult conditions.

The project will enhance the opportunity for Canadian imaging technology to be considered in future terrestrial solutions to detect and track space debris or demonstrate the optimal performance of the technology in stratospheric balloon and observatory tests, an important feature for being included in future space exploration and surveillance missions.