Space, Eh?

We sat down with the winners of the Shad Canada 2020 Design Challenge! The program devised a novel challenge for their 2020 cohort: to design a research project, completely virtually in the era of COVID-19, for suborbital flight that leverages space and microgravity in a meaningful and creative way with impacts for science and humanity. A judging panel of Shad representatives and industry experts evaluated 62 final projects based on their impact, scientific merit, technical feasibility and project plan, and the final team, Mous4Inc., was selected as the winner. Listen on to hear about their investigation of the structural formation of polyurethane foam in microgravity and potential terrestrial applications.

Dr. Ferguson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Manitoba and holds the NSERC / Magellan Aerospace Industrial Research Chair in Satellite Engineering. His work aims to improve the reliability and accessibility of space technology through research into new satellite control and manufacturing technologies. We got to speak to him about CubeSats and how young people can get more involved in space. 

We bring you an exciting conversation with Dr. Ed Cloutis! He has over 25 years of expertise in Earth and planetary remote sensing. His research focuses on developing new applications of remote sensing to exploring the surface of the Earth and planets in the solar system, both for geology and the search for extraterrestrial life. He is the founder and Director of the University of Winnipeg's Planetary Spectrophotometer Facility, a state-of-the-art lab dedicated to advancing planetary exploration.

Cloutis is a member of science teams associated with a number of planetary exploration missions, including the NASA-led Dawn asteroid rendezvous mission, the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity) rover, the NASA-CSA OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, and the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and ExoMars rover. He has over 150 peer-reviewed publications.

You can reach out to him with more questions at [email protected]. 

What is Lunar Ice Mining and what's on a Canadian $5 bill? We answer these interesting questions and more in our conversation with Zac Trolley. Zac is an engineer who spent 2 weeks in Utah at a Mars simulation site and hopes to go Mars one day. For now, he's setting up a Lunar Water Supply  company and hopes that Canada can dream bigger to achieve even bigger heights!

Learn more about his work at https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-trolley/, MDRS Mission page http://mdrs.marssociety.org/crew-188/, The Lunar Water Supply Company page https://lunarwatersupply.com. For more info on the Canadian $5 bill check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_five-dollar_note

While this podcast is about Canadians in Space, we also love highlighting the narratives of young people working the space industry who inspire us. This week we bring you a bonus episode featuring Hans Uy, a Space Banker. He's a financial analyst at SpaceX by trade but space geek by passion. On this episode we chat about his blog (Astronomical Returns), combining your passion with your skills, and representation in the space industry!