Grants and Contributions

Equip learning spaces at Eden Valley Community Learning Campus in southern Alberta

Equip learning spaces at Eden Valley Community Learning Campus in southern Alberta

Contribution agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to support the development of Safeguards e-Learning Modules

The objectives of the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy Program (YESSP) are to help all youth navigate through the labour market and to successfully transition into sustained employment. These objectives are attained by supporting the needs of all youth, especially youth facing barriers to develop skills, knowledge and networks through education, skills development and meaningful work experiences.

The objectives of the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy Program (YESSP) are to help all youth navigate through the labour market and to successfully transition into sustained employment. These objectives are attained by supporting the needs of all youth, especially youth facing barriers to develop skills, knowledge and networks through education, skills development and meaningful work experiences.

The exploration of the Moon will have to rely on the In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) of Lunar material. This is particularly true for propellants, whose transport from Earth is too expensive. Lunar rocks present a cheap and abundant source of propellant mixtures, as the oxidizer (oxygen) and fuels (metal alloys) can be relatively easily extracted with existing technologies.

The purpose of the project is to advance the design of a propulsion technology, based on the combustion of ISRU-derived metal alloy/liquid oxygen propellants. The main objective of the study consists in providing experimental parameters for the conceptual design of a corresponding rocket engine.

The project will benefit Canada by giving it a unique edge in the development of a cheap and practical technology for Lunar transportation. It will also provide crucial data for the development of the Earth-based concept of metal powders as sustainable zero-carbon carriers of clean energy.

Missions to various planetary bodies in our Solar System – such as asteroids, the Moon, Mars, and comets – that involve bringing back a sample of that body are currently operating, planned or proposed by the world’s main space agencies. These Sample Return Missions will provide material for research by generations of scientists for decades to come. A crucial component of any Sample Return Mission is curation. Curation is the careful preservation of samples through the use of materials, tools, and enclosures, throughout all steps after return to Earth. The types of targets for future Sample Return need specific, advanced methods for their curation in order to keep them uncontaminated by molecules and conditions at the Earth’s surface.

The main purpose of this project is to train Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP) in the advanced methods that will be needed for samples from future Sample Return Missions. The project will run the returned sample part of two analogue Sample Return Missions, using the Subzero Facility for the Curation of Astromaterials at the University of Alberta. The first mission will use materials that simulate what is expected from the surface of a comet or carbon-rich asteroid, and the second will involve materials analogous to what is collected by the NASA Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission.

The Arctic is rapidly exhibiting signs of global climate change. The transition from thick
perennial sea ice to a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean has major consequences for sustainable
development, transportation, and communities in Arctic regions. Knowledge of the physical and thermodynamic state of sea ice is therefore critically important in understanding how climate change is affecting the planet.

This project will develop advanced deployable antennas that can be used in satellite remote sensing applications, with the goal of improving Canada’s capacity for monitoring the Arctic. The proposed antenna concepts have never been used in space applications and must be further developed for use on future missions. The designs are a technological leap since the concept allows one antenna to perform as if there were two antennas on the satellite and provides equivalent satellite imaging capability. This means that upcoming satellites will have lower mass and will be more compact, which are important considerations for launch and future mission costs. The project will provide training for highly qualified personnel (HQP) in antenna design for space applications, providing a hands-on experience to students in a space-related project, building, testing, and verifying antenna prototypes, advancing expertise on satellite antenna design at the University of Manitoba, and developing expertise in the design of a deployable Hybrid-Reflector-Array satellite antenna.

Immediate potential applications from this project include MicroSat synthetic aperture radar (SAR) instruments. The main tangible outcome expected from this novel, stand-alone project is an advanced deployable SAR antenna. This investment will encourage potential commercial, research, and business opportunities, as the designs from this project will be communicated to the scientific and industrial communities.

The periods before and during the formation of the first stars in the Universe, known respectively as the Dark Ages and Cosmic Dawn, remain almost completely unexplored. In the current paradigm of cosmology, the first stars formed within the first 100 million years of the Universe, and studying them through direct optical or infrared observations is not expected to be possible. Fortunately, the early Universe was filled with neutral hydrogen gas, out of which the first stars formed. Ultraviolet and X-ray radiation from the first stars and galaxies left an imprint on the 21 cm neutral hydrogen radiation, which is a promising observational tool for characterizing the first stars and galaxies.

This project consists of deploying custom-built radio telescopes at the extremely remote McGill Arctic Research Station (MARS), in the Canadian High Arctic, to attempt to observe the faint signal emitted by the first stars. The main purpose of this project is to use these telescopes as prototypes for a future space mission and test them at MARS, which will be used as a space analogue site. In addition to conducting the sky measurements, other objectives of this project include the characterization of the soil and topography at MARS, and the accurate calibration of the radio instruments in the laboratory before and after the MARS deployments. Broader objectives include the hands-on training of students in all aspects of the project and the dissemination of results in conferences and scientific journals.

This project will enable, for the first time, testing of radio telescopes’ performance at a space analogue site. The expected outcomes include the verification of the performance of the telescopes, the experience gained by the team after operating these instruments at an extremely remote site, and the use of the sky measurements to test physical hypotheses about the first stars. The hands-on training received by the students will help them to strongly contribute to industry and academia. The measurement techniques to be demonstrated at MARS will go beyond the state-of-the-art in radio engineering and geophysics, and this project will promote Canadian participation in international partnerships.

A key question for astrobiology is the distribution of life in the universe. Presently, we have only one example of life which is found on Earth. However, there is evidence that habitable
environments once existed on Mars and might currently exist within the subsurface ocean of Enceladus, an icy moon of Saturn. Therefore, space agencies have great interest in searching for evidence of life on these planetary worlds, or to at least search for environments with conditions that are compatible with life as we know it.

A goal of this project is to inform and enable future methods for the search for life at Enceladus. In 2005, the Cassini mission revealed this icy ocean world to have plumes of gas containing CO2, organic compounds and H2 venting into space over the south polar region. At Lake Untersee, a perennially ice-covered lake in Antarctica, the deep anoxic basin with its unusual biogeochemical processes serves as an analog environment, providing a model for the study of the composition of the Enceladus plume and the potential habitability of its sub-ice ocean. This project seeks to determine the source of H2-CO2 in Untersee’s anoxic waters which drives many of the biochemical processes taking place, search for the presence of biosignatures, and determine the isotopic composition and concentration of other geochemical constituents. Our results will be used to investigate the possibility of a habitable subsurface ocean world at Enceladus. Using a remotely operated vehicle capable of exploring the anaerobic and aerobic waters within the sub-ice environment of Untersee, our project will map the distribution of the benthic microbial mats, characterize their various morphologies and collect sediment samples for additional laboratory analyses.

The objectives pursued in this project are highly relevant to the analyses of the gaseous constituents in the plumes of Enceladus, the analyses of carbon compounds from plume samples returned to Earth, or for the deployment of a penetrator into the subsurface ocean that would conduct in-situ experiments and image a possible ecosystem. Highly qualified personnel will be trained in space-related activities and will work with international co-applicants as well as Canadian industry partners where they will gain practical experience in the fields of astrobiology and technology. Our findings at Untersee will help inform and prepare future missions that will search for evidence of life on Enceladus.