Canada In Space

GHGSat is on a roll having raised more funds and looks to pad its lead in the commercial monitoring of global emissions from small satellites.Recently GHGSat announced it had raised US$10M in a Series A2 financing. The funds bring to $20M GHGSat has raised to date, including funds from the Alberta and federal governments.It’s also been over two years now that GHGSat’s first satellite, Claire, was launched. In that time a lot has changed politically, especially when talking about carbon taxes. What hasn’t changed is the need to monitor global emissions. And this week the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also issued a dire warning.My guest this week on the SpaceQ podcast is Stephane Germain, CEO of GHGSat. Stephane is also a member of the Space Advisory Board and he’ll provide us a brief update on the Advisory Board’s activities.As you’ll hear from Stephane, regardless of the political climate, monitoring global emissions by commercial companies like his isn’t going away, in fact, the business case and businesses in this space segment are getting ready to take-off.

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My guest this week is Professor Gordon Osinski, Director of the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration at Western University. Today we’ll be talking about water on Mars and the history of water discoveries on the Red Planet. As well, is there liquid water on Mars today? It’s a question that we haven’t decided with any certainty even though we’ve found evidence that suggest water flowed in the past on Mars. As well the Martian polar caps contain water ice. However unlike Earths polar caps, the Martian polar caps are a combination of water ice and carbon dioxide ice. Recently though there was news that there may a lake of water under the surface of the Martian south polar cap. Is this really the case? And what are the implications for human exploration should it be verified that there’s liquid water on Mars today?

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Kleos Space is looking to build a satellite constellation that will collect radio transmissions data that is currently hidden from detection for commercial and government civil and defence clients.The company has signed GomSpace to build the constellation of 20 satellites, with the first set of up to three nanosatellites ready for launch by mid-2019. Last week the company announced that Rocket Labs had been contracted as their launch provider.Kleos a fascinating startup. It's founders are British, but decided to base the business in Luxembourg and then go public in Australia. The company has already won contracts and has begun to build its new Data as a Service (DaaS) platform called Guardian ABI (Activity Based Intelligence).It's part of a new breed of small satellite startups looking to build itself a place in the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) market space by taking advantage of commercial off the shelf products, placing those sensors on nanosatellites and building a new data platform.Listen in as I talk with Andy Bowyer, co-founder and CEO of Kleos Space.

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My guest today is Professor Sarah Gallagher, Canada’s new Science Advisor to the president of the Canadian Space Agency. In this interview Sarah provides more detail on her new position as well as sharing her thoughts on Canada’s space program and the news that a Japanese private citizen has purchased all the seats on a SpaceX spacecraft to go to the moon and back.

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Today we’re going to hear from Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques. At 48, Saint-Jacques will start his first and possibly only mission to the International Space Station in late December. Saint-Jacques is the rare astronaut that is qualified in four disciplines. He has an engineering physics degree and PhD in Astrophysics, is a licensed doctor and has a commercial pilot license. That last skill will come in handy when on December 19 (Eastern time), already December 20 in Kazakhstan, he’ll co-pilot the Soyuz spacecraft as it launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome to the International Space Station. And it’s no small feat to co-pilot the Soyuz. Chris Hadfield set the precedent and translated the pilots training manual from Russian to English. For Saint-Jacques though, he also speaks Russian. Once on orbit he’ll work for six months on the ISS spending 50% of his time working with the other astronauts to keep the space station in top operating condition. The other 50% of his time will be doing a lot of research including some important medical experiments that are aimed at benefiting humans on Earth.On September 6th Saint-Jacques took time from his busy training schedule to talk to the media. This included a press conference followed by a very brief one-on-one interviews with the media. SpaceQ had the opportunity to spend a few minutes talking to Saint-Jacques. That Q&A presented here is preceded by his introductory remarks at the new conference and is followed by questions from the media.

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My guest today is Alex MacDonald, Senior Economic Advisor in the Office of the Administrator at NASA Headquarters in Washington. I’ll note that Alex is appearing in a personal capacity and not representing NASA in this interview.Alex is recognized as an expert on the economic history of American space exploration and contemporary private sector space activities. He was previously the founding program executive of NASA's Emerging Space Office and is the author and editor of a number of NASA reports including Emerging Space: The Evolving Landscape of 21st Century American Spaceflight, Public-Private Partnerships for Space Capability Development, and Economic Development of Low-Earth Orbit.Alex, who is Canadian, received his undergraduate degree in economics from Queen's University, his master's degree in economics from the University of British Columbia, and was a Clarendon Scholar at the University of Oxford where he obtained his doctorate on the long-run economic history of American space exploration. In today’s episode we’ll talk about Alex’s work at NASA as an economist and the book he published last year, The Long Space Age.

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Last week part two of our our three part podcast Summer Series was on the Future of Nuclear Powered Space Exploration which will one day increase our ability to explore the solar system. This week In episode 3, the topic is Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species.Our Summer Series features recent important talks on topics we think you’ll find interesting. Our regular interviews will resume the first week in September.The speaker this week is SpaceX founder Elon Musk. In this talk at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide just about a year ago, Musk discusses the long-term technical challenges that need to be solved to support the creation of a permanent, self-sustaining human presence on Mars. It's not a project that SpaceX can do alone. To build a sustaining human presence on Mars will require the collaboration of industry, government and the scientific community.Listen in...

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Hi, I’m Marc Boucher and this is a SpaceQ podcast special. On Friday, August 24th NASA hosted a media teleconference on the OSIRIS-REx mission which will return an asteroid sample to Earth. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is now preparing to conduct approach maneuvers as it heads for a December 3rd rendezvous with asteroid Bennu.Canada is participating in the mission by providing the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter or OLA as its called. The OLA instrument will create a critical 3-D map of asteroid Bennu’s shape as well as assisting with spacecraft navigation.Listen in as NASA provides and update and answers journalist questions. The slides and video for this event are linked from out story on SpaceQ. For more information on Canada’s participation, I would direct to you Episode 23 of the SpaceQ podcast where I interviewed Mike Daly from York University.

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Last week we began our our three part podcast Summer Series with a talk on the Parker Solar Probe which is on its way to touch the sun, a first for humanity. In episode 2, the topic is the Future of Nuclear Powered Space Travel and the the Kilopower Project.Our Podcast Summer Series features recent important talks on topics we think you’ll find interesting. Our regular interviews will resume the first week in September.The speaker this week is Patrick McClure of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. McClure is the Project Lead for Kilopower Project which is an effort being conducted with NASA. The lecture was presented at the National Atomic Testing Museum earlier this year.The Kilopower project is a near-term technology effort to develop preliminary concepts and technologies that could be used for an affordable fission nuclear power system to enable long-duration stays on planetary surfaces.

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In the first of a three part Podcast Summer Series we’ll be bringing you recent talks on topics we think are important and that you’ll find interesting. Our regular interviews will resume in September.This week, and only days after the launch, we have a talk from earlier this year from the South by Southwest Music Festival. The topic, NASA's Parker Solar Probe. The speakers are Project Scientist Nicola Fox and Lead Thermal Protection System Engineer Elizabeth Congdon, both from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.According to NASA the "historic Parker Solar Probe mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe will travel through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions — and ultimately providing humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star."As you’ll hear, the story of this mission started 60 years ago. It’s a fascinating story and for the first time humanity will send a spacecraft that will touch the sun. Listen in…NASA Parker Solar Probehttps://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

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