Grants and Contributions

System to zap moon dust with microwaves, freeze out chemicals for future use and collect pure water.

A multi-stage lunar water filtration and distillation system that purifies water from shadowed moon regions using heated domes, cold traps, and vapour-based membrane distillation.

The objective of this project is to develop technology to enable a small gimbal mechanism, capable of surviving the harsh thermal and radiation environment on the lunar surface, onto which cameras, sensors, antennae and other small instruments can be mounted.

CTA is developing an innovative, modular, scalable, and Canadian made Lunar Battery System. CTA aims to extend its 15+ years of battery expertise to lunar environments by integrating factors like vacuum conditions, lunar nights, radiation exposure, and more into its knowledge base. The objective is to acquire the expertise needed to define requirements, design, build, test, and demonstrate the suitability of battery design elements tailored for lunar applications. The expectation is a significant improvement in the fields of thermal management, thermal event mitigation and redundant system architecture when compared to baseline technologies.

This project leverages existing Honeywell OISL developments to progress the following steps in the Honeywell product development:
a) Redesign, implementation, and demonstration of internal calibration to improve pointing accuracy and create a modular system that can be integrated into other telescope/terminal systems creating a potential standalone sub-product.
b) Redesign, procurement, and demonstration of an improved telescope mirror technology and design that improves mechanical performance, lowers mass, and improves manufacturability while lowering overall cost.
c) Full system mass overhaul to investigate feasibility of weight-relieved structure(s), lightweight materials, and new optical design layouts with fewer components.

The project objectives are to perform a proof-of-concept and advance the development through hardware prototyping and software development of the next generation high performance single board processor platform that will deliver enhanced processing capabilities, advanced AI/ML processing, while improving performance gain and fault tolerance at low power. The expected outcome is a reference design serving as basis to build the next generation high performance processor platform that would be integrated into MDA’s future satellite.

MDA’s Lunar Exploration Robotic Arm (LERA) product will be the workhorse robotic solution for commercial lunar exploration. The LERA Rotary Actuator is at the core of this manipulator. This project will develop the LERA Actuator for the extreme conditions on the lunar surface and will prove the viability of the actuator through environmental testing. LERA adds to the family of MDA robotic manipulators in the new and exciting lunar surface market.

Mission Control proposes to develop an AutoNav system to enable continuous autonomous rover driving at a speed of 1km/h. AutoNav is composed of a flight and ground segment: a rover sensor and compute module hosting Xiphos’ and Mission Control’s suite of navigation algorithms, and mission operations software leveraging Mission Control’s Spacefarer TM product. AutoNav will be developed and tested to TRL 6 on rover prototypes in representative lunar lighting and terrain at Mission Control’s indoor high-fidelity Moonyard facility.

The objective of this project is to support the development of K-Band up/down converters (UDC) in the first phase followed by a second phase where the converters will be integrated into a single package with additional features and functionality added. This development will produce flexible, adaptable UDCs for Software Defined Satellite applications. The target of this project is TRL6 flight ready modules.

Reaction Dynamics will be developing space mobility solutions based around a novel hybrid rocket engine technology, enabling Reaction Dynamics to sell launch services and dedicated orbital transfer vehicles at a fraction of the cost of competitors. The focus of this project is to support this effort by developing and demonstrating a lightweight, large-size composite propellant tank. This project will build on the previous work done on composite pressure vessels, culminating in a full scale experimentally demonstrated design.