Description:
The Research component of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Class Grant and Contribution Program to support Research, Awareness and Learning in Space Science and Technology provides financial support to organizations to conduct space related research and development in priority areas. It will support targeted knowledge development and innovation to sustain and enhance the Canadian capacity to use space to address national needs and priorities in the future.
The Announcement of opportunity “ Flights for the Advancement of Science and Technology (FAST)” aims at:
- Fostering the continuing development of a critical mass of researchers and HQP by providing a training ground for both the current and next generation of scientists and engineers;
- Supporting the development of science and technology relevant to the priorities of the CSA through the use of research platforms including stratospheric balloons, aircraft, sounding rockets, nanosatellites, cubesats, ground-based facilities and field sites.
More specifically, this project is entitled “Precision Reference Calibration for Dark Energy, Microwave Astronomy, and Atmospheric Physics”.
A substance called « dark energy” makes up the bulk of the universe and is driving it accelerating expansion. Modern cosmology is also built on a paradigm of an early period of rapid inflation, but the gravitational waves from this time haven't been detected. These twin problems in cosmology are limited by calibration uncertainties: in the atmospheric attenuation of light for DE, and in instrumental sensitivity for GW. In this project a new Canadian-led technique for reducing these uncertainties is proposed, using calibrated optical and microwave light sources above the atmosphere, for telescopes worldwide to use as precision references.