Grants and Contributions

Advancing Boreal Caribou Conservation with Mikisew Cree First Nation

Preparatory work by Saulteau First Nations to get ready for a Southern Mountain Caribou Partnership Agreement

Contribution to assist Algonquins of Ontario in submitting a written intervention to the Commission regarding the enviornmental assesment scoping decision for Global First Power's micro modular reactor project.

Stratospheric balloon telescopes, operating above 99.5% of the Earth's atmosphere, avoid atmospheric distortions present in terrestrial ground based telescopes, thus improving the observation of stars.

The project goal is to repair and upgrade the Superpressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) telescope to improve, in particular, star camera performance and automatic telescope focus/alignment. The SuperBIT telescope will provide large images of distant galaxies with detail comparable to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This project will pave the way for future telescopes with even greater capabilities and will additionally explore other applications, including earth observation.

Reliable climate data is crucial for Canadians to understand how our climate is changing. The Canadian Atmospheric Laser Absorption Spectroscopy Experiment Test-bed (CALASET) aims to build a suite of instruments to verify measurements from Earth-observing satellites. It is important to ensure that these space-based instruments are performing well to produce critical climate data.

The CALASET-Next Generation (CALASET-NG) project furthers this development with two main objectives: 1) develop new technologies for measuring gases in the atmosphere and provide a validation and verification capability for current and future satellite missions, and 2) provide concept-to-flight education and training for the students who will become the scientists and engineers needed for future satellite missions.

The project team will design, build and test innovative instrumentation for measuring how atmospheric gas concentrations change with height, and will analyze these data following the instruments' flight on a stratospheric balloon.

Over the next decade, advancements in X-ray detectors will revolutionize our understanding of some of the most extreme events in the Universe. It will be possible to measure precisely and simultaneously the energy and arrival time of X-ray radiation coming from astrophysical sources.

The project aims to answer fundamental questions in astrophysics, leading to a better understanding of the nature and workings of neutron stars, black holes and the remnants of supernova explosions—the astrophysical objects driving the energetic and chemical evolution of our galaxy and beyond. The next generation of highly qualified personnel will be trained to get the most out of new large datasets by using observations from launched space-based missions, such as the Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) onboard the International Space Station. They will be also trained to work on future missions and tackle the large datasets that businesses and governments use today.

Increasing variable and unpredictable sea ice conditions in Canadian Arctic waters require the development of technologies for enhancing domain awareness, mitigation hazards, and understanding environmental change.

As part of Multidisciplinary drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC), researchers in the project, committed to understanding the consequences of Arctic climate change, are deploying microwave scatterometer systems on the sea ice in order to collect snow and sea ice geophysical property measurements, microwave scatterometer measurements, and multi-sensor satellite observations. Data collected will enable researchers to develop information products, addressing the social and environmental consequences of rapidly changing ice conditions in Canadian waters, decreasing risks from sea-ice associated hazards, and improving the accuracy of short-term weather and sea ice forecast.

Studies on spaceflights lasting more than one year have shown that, due to weightlessness, astronauts on long missions may lose as much as twenty percent of their bone mass, which leads to a significant increase in risk of fracture and other complications.

Following the previous work and discovery in bone-resorbing osteoclasts and in optimizing bone cell culture in simulated microgravity, the present project aims to determine the molecular mechanism behind bone loss in astronauts. The main objectives include the grow of osteoclasts on bone surfaces in simulated microgravity, comparison of the osteoclasts grown in static culture to those in simulated microgravity, and the direct measurement of osteoclast morphology, ultrastructure, differentiation, fusion and bone-resorbing activity.

In addition to engaging trainees' in discovery-based microgravity research and developing novel bone cell micro carriers, this work will identify potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of osteoporosis in astronauts and in patients on Earth.

The potential to identify and analyze distributions of isotopologues would provide new opportunities in the search for biosignatures of life as part of astrobiology-related space missions.

This project aims to extend the capabilities of a planetary science laboratory instrument that combines three measurement techniques for Mars exploration: laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy and time-resolved laser-induced fluorescence. In particular, the laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy mode of the instrument will be extended to measure isotopes of key elements important for dating and discrimination of biological and abiological signatures.

This work will result in new knowledge on the environmental sensitivity of these techniques in environments relevant to the Earth, Moon, Mars, asteroids and comets; providing new capabilities for planetary exploration. It will also be valuable in understanding and updating the requirements for a future flight instrument.

The terrains of Mars and the Moon consist of fine granular regolith with embedded rocks. The entrapment of the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in soft regolith and the tears and punctures in the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover's wheels demonstrate some of the current mobility challenges of extraterrestrial granular terrains. Understanding the nature of interactions with granular terrains is thus crucial to exploring these high priority destinations.

This project aims to advance robot mobility in granular terrains, through studying the effects of reduced gravity on wheel-soil interactions. A crucial long-term contribution of such experimental work is the development and validation of models and/or on-Earth soil simulants general enough to eventually supplant the need to fly reduced-gravity campaigns for each new wheel/soil/gravity configuration. Such reduced-gravity rover soil testing apparatus could provide an experimentation infrastructure for Canadian companies to test, validate, and raise the technology readiness level of wheels for any planned Lunar or Martian rovers.

This research will contribute to Canada being at the cutting-edge of planetary rover research, to maintaining its global position of leadership in space robotics, and to inspiring the next generation of Canadians to reach for the stars.