Canada In Space

Hi, I’m Marc Boucher and this is the SpaceQ podcast. This past week we were at the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute ASTRO 2019 conference in Laval, Quebec. The theme was “Space for Business”.One of the plenary sessions we recorded and present here is the speech of Canadian Space Agency president Sylvain Laporte. It is a very different speech from what he said a year ago at this conference when the government had yet again rejected the space plan as proposed. While the listener will come away feeling good about Canada’s space program, as they should compared to a year ago, we’ve added some context to the speech in an article we’ve posted to the SpaceQ website. Listen in.Related story - Don’t Let Go Canada and Changes at the Canadian Space Agency Resulted in Government Funding Commitment;https://sqm.me/2LstPIQASTRO 2019 stories on SpaceQ;https://sqm.me/2Jbkqmd

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If you're a serial entrepreneur and you want to start a New Space company, what type of business should you start? Well, how about Gas Stations in Space?In this weeks SpaceQ podcast we're featuring a Future in Space Operations weekly teleconference from earlier this year with Daniel Faber, CEO of startup Orbit Fab.Daniel, an Australian who become a Canadian citizen, was most recently the CEO of Deep Space Industries which he helped build, and which reached $10 million in revenues before he left.It was during his time at Deep Space Industries that he saw an opportunity in the on-orbit servicing market. Why not build gas stations in different orbits so that satellites can fill up on fuel.Listen in

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My guest today is Adam Gilmour the founder and CEO of Gilmour Space Technologies, an Australian startup building launch vehicles, starting with a small satellite launcher. Adam’s career as a managing director at CITI Bank was going just fine until Elon Musk came along with his ideas on how to lower the cost of sending payloads to space. Musk inspired Adam so much so that he left his nice job at CITI Bank to start his own rocket company. Now the company is about to launch its first suborbital rocket followed by plans to test a follow-on orbital launch vehicle. His story is one of perseverance, lot’s of hard work and with no guarantee of success.Listen in.

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My guest today is Steve Iris, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission Manager at the Canadian Space Agency. Today we’ll be discussing the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, its primary uses and benefits to Canadians and the international community. RCM is a $1.2B mission follow-on to the very successful RADARSAT-1 and RADARSAT-2 satellites.The RADARSAT Constellation Mission is a trio of synthetic aperture radar satellites that will be used for maritime surveillance, disaster management and ecosystem monitoring. The trio of satellites are currently scheduled to launch on Wednesday, June 12 at 10:17 a.m. EDT on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force base in California. The mission has been 15 years in the making.Listen in.

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My guest today on the SpaceQ podcast is former Canadian astronaut Dr. Robert Thirsk who was recently hired back by the CSA on a contract basis to help with their efforts in defining Canada’s potential role in healthcare in deep space.Canadian Healthcare in Deep Space: Advancing our country’s leadership in autonomous care in space and on Earth report. Credit: Canadian Space Agency.Dr. Thirsk went on two missions in space, including a long duration stay on the International Space Station in 2009.Prior to rejoining the agency, Dr. Thrisk was part of an expert group tasked by the CSA to look at the potential Canadian healthcare and biomedical roles for Deep Space Human Spaceflight. In March the expert groups report was released in hard copy. The report is called Canadian Healthcare in Deep Space: Advancing our country’s leadership in autonomous care in space and on Earth. The report is not yet available online but SpaceQ did receive a hard copy. Dr. Thirsk and I discuss the recommendations of that report while also discussing other related medical issues here on Earth, and even the distant possibility of human colonies on other worlds or on human made O’Neil type colonies.Listen in.

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My guest today is Mike Gold, Vice President, Regulatory and Policy at Maxar Technologies. For this podcast we’re going to talk to Mike about his other role. That of Chair of NASA’s Advisory Council Regulatory and Policy Issues Committee.The committee was created in the summer of 2018 to look at how NASA could further commercialize its activities. Mike is one of 15 members, mostly from industry, that meet several times a year including with NASA’s other Advisory Council committees.Committee members include long time space players such as Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin to new space companies SpaceX and Blue Origin to name a few. In its first meeting last November the committee published its first observations, findings, and recommendations. The committee tackled a board range of ideas from export controls, intellectual property, supporting space-based commercial development, private sector habitats, logos, advertising, astronaut endorsements and space research.Listen in.

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On Monday, May 13, NASA contacted the media on short notice late in the afternoon saying a teleconference was being scheduled for the early evening. Scheduling a teleconference in the evening is not something NASA normally does. Whatever the substance of the call, it must be important. As it turns out the call with media was to outline a budget amendment for the Fiscal Year 2020 to provide additional funds to the Trump administration newly mandated plan for NASA to land U.S. astronauts on the moon in 2024 instead of 2028. The call with the details would in of itself be important, but at the end of the teleconference, after answering questions from the media, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine added a little something that would put the call into the NASA history books. Bridenstine announced that NASA had selected the name Artemis for the human return to the moon program. In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and the name of NASA’s famed 60’s moon program which saw humans land on the moon for the first time in 1969. Now 50 years later, the Artemis Program will be an international effort, though led by the US, that plans to create the infrastructure for a permanent moon base at the south pole. Listen in.The NASA Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Amendment documents are available here:https://www.nasa.gov/news/budget/index.html

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Today we’re featuring a Future In-Space Operation teleconference with Steve Clarke from the NASA headquarters where he is the Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Steve spoke about NASA’s Exploration Campaign Overview providing an update on the program and where it’s headed. The teleconference was held on April 17th after the Trump administration had mandated that NASA put Americans on the moon within 5 years.The presentation mentioned in the podcast is available on the SpaceQ website.Listen in.

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On April 12 Western University held its annual Space Day. One of the more interesting events was a panel discussion on Space Resources: The Next Frontier in Exploration.The discussion was moderated by Mellisa Battler, a Western grad and current Chief Science Officer at Mission Control Space Services. The panelists were a diverse group including;-Michael Winter, a lawyer and a Market Conduct Investigator, London Life Insurance Company - Holly Johnson, President’s Business Manager, MDA- Mike Villeneuve, Director Central Canada Division, Geological Survey of Canada- Neil Banerjee, Industrial Research Chair in Advanced Mineral Exploration, Western University- Tim Haltigin, Senior Mission Scientist - Planetary Exploration, Canadian Space Agency- Charles Nyabeze, Vice-President Business Development, Centre for Excellence in Mining InnovationIt was a fascinating discussion on how we’ll use resources we find in space to what companies in this area should consider as they execute the longer term goal of enabling use of these resources.Listen in.

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Today we’re featuring a panel discussion recorded at the Perimeter Institute on March 8th for International Women’s Day. The Inspiring Future Women in Science panelists included:- Moderator Kelly Foyle, Perimeter Outreach Scientist- Kona Williams, a Forensic Pathologist and Coroner- Shirley Tang, Nanotechnology Scientist- Camille Mitchell, Architect- Daniela Roeper, Mechanical Engineer.Listen in.

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