Montreal Space Symposium 2019

In 2016, GHGSat launched a demonstration satellite ("Claire") for monitoring greenhouse gas emissions from any industrial site in the world. Claire has proven that it is possible to detect and quantify emissions from oil & gas, power generation, waste management and other sources around the world. Claire will soon be joined by two new GHGSat satellites and an aircraft sensor, all launching within the next 12 months, providing an order-of-magnitude improvement in performance and capacity. GHGSat is collecting all measurements in a new global datastore for greenhouse gas emissions, together with relevant data from third-party satellite and ground sources. This datastore is being used to develop new analytics, such as neural networks to identify emissions plumes and predictive algorithms to identify areas and facilities at high risk of emissions. These innovations are ushering-in a new era of global transparency for industrial greenhouse gas emissions, providing operators, regulators and policy-makers with the insights they need to reduce emissions.

The Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) builds low-cost microsatellites and nanosatellites that continually push the performance envelope. SFL has had 20 successful years of space flight. With over 20 satellites in orbit, they have accumulated over 100 years of flight heritage. Missions are typically developed with stringent attitude control and data requirements that are striking relative to the budget available.SFL also offers a unique opportunity for graduate students of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies to work alongside experienced spacecraft engineers on nano/microsatellite missions. Find out more about what SFL, spaceflight and the graduate program during this session.

We are all born curious and accumulate a deeper understanding of the world as we gain experiences. A perspective of the universe was not something I thought would be relevant when starting university, and through an initial opportunity at Concordia, soon became my whole world. The universe is a captivating mystery that draws many of us to explore and push the frontier of what is possible, and for myself, a mixture of determination and passion fuelled all my contributions. The constant has always been the people that enable such grand projects to come together, as aligning our goals and focusing our efforts is the best way to learn and achieve in this industry. At Space Concordia, I initially worked on the payload for the Aleksandr satellite while knowing close to nothing. As the society grew, we were involved with outreach events, conferences, workshops; all exposing us to a large range of experiences and fields. Once concluding university, I had gained plenty of experience with spacecraft, our first sounding rocket and our first high altitude balloon. I took this momentum to work at Space Flight Laboratory as part of my masters where I decided to focus on thermal systems. Again being exposed to many experts in the fields, we have successful satellites in orbit and more scheduled for the future. Once my duties were completed, I moved back to Montreal and decided to work with Nuvu Cameras, where we are collaborating with the WFIRST mission to integrate our powerful cameras for their spacecraft. My exposure with multiple disciplines is what helps me guide these devices throughout development, while learning from my team on the intricacies of what they have created. Continuously exploring and sharing our progress is how we build perspective in this changing world.

What is it like to work in the Space industry? This presentation covers a typical day for a spacecraft thermal control engineer. It describes the challenges, engineering decisions, communications and work encountered in a typical day.

Attendees exploring a future in the space industry will come away with a better understanding of this particular field to inform their career and education choices.

Satellite operations presents a wide range of challenges as an Earth-based team operates and maintains a spacecraft in orbit that they cannot see or touch. Engineers need to respond to new issues in real time as well as anticipate future problems by proactively monitoring spacecraft health and preparing detailed response plans and products. The RADARSAT-2 mission, which has been successfully operated at the Canadian Space Agency for over 11 years, has many examples of how operations staff have responded to and anticipated new challenges. An overview of the RADARSAT-2 operations philosophy will be presented, bringing together a team with various skill sets and various horizon to address challenging issues along with a summary of the most interesting challenges encountered and overcome during the mission thus far.

On June 12 SpaceX launched the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM), a trio of radar earth observation satellites built by MDA for the Canadian Space Agency, continuing Canada’s legacy as a pioneering innovator in synthetic aperture radar technologies. Behind this launch was years of preparation by the satellite operations team, a highly interdisciplinary group of people ranging from spacecraft engineers to software engineers to image scientists. Together they developed and tested software and procedures to control the satellite using a complex system spanning across the globe from the North West Territories to Antarctica (and of course, space). This talk will explain how the operations team prepared for the launch and walk through the early stages of operations leading to the first images on the satellites. It will also detail the particular complexities and challenges faced in the early stages of the mission and explain how the operations team was able to successfully overcome these challenges towards a successful mission.

Technological advancements such as launch reusability and advanced manufacturing are paving the way to exciting growth in the next decade. Emerging markets such as lunar payload delivery, satellite mega-constellations and orbital robotics servicing will rise and mature. Yet, one major impediment to this optimistic outlook is the state of software development.

Flight software is developed linearly and is highly customized to embedded targets. This limits portability between targets and reusability across spacecraft and missions. Software is typically tailored and rewritten for individual applications making development slow, expensive and a highly specialized task. Computationally limited flight hardware imposes limits on algorithm and mission design and performance. For commercial missions, ground software, infrastructure, and user interfaces are custom built, application-specific, and are designed with little consideration for scalable and secure distribution of data and command authority. To address these challenges, Mission Control is developing an end-to-end suite of solutions in the flight and ground segments that leverages state-of-the-art software design practices and technologies. The ground segment is a cloud-based solution to provide on-demand software at scale for distributed mission operations and data analytics. The space segment consists of a flight software platform that can run on radiation-tolerant Linux-capable COTS processors with high processing power. It supports higher-level software languages than traditionally used on heritage space hardware. Overall, it enables rapid development and powerful algorithms in space and ground segments, which in turn enables intelligence and autonomy.

This presentation will summarize some of the pain points that will limit the viability of commercial space exploration and describe strategies to address them. Our vision is to grow an ecosystem of flight software developers, users and applications while providing turn-key mission-as-a-service solutions for terrestrial and space mission operations. We believe that lowering the barriers to flight software development, facilitating more autonomy in space and enabling direct accessibility to space missions supports the democratization and commercialization of space exploration

The aerospace industry of Canada is vibrant, innovative and complex, with a rich history and elite reputation on a global stage. The Aerospace Research Center of National Research Council Canada (NRC) supports this important industry with facilities, expertise and industry foresight to develop fresh ideas and new technologies, demonstrate new products and processes that target the market challenges faced by the Canadian and global aeronautics and space sectors.

NRC has significant experience and expertise in R&D of space technologies and systems. This paper presents space related research activities and facilities at the NRC Aerospace Research Center. Facilities for space dynamic environmental simulation and testing include a large reverberant chamber for acoustic qualification of full-scale spacecraft and large satellite structures to the launch noise environment; a 10k lb(f) electromechanical shaker table for vibration environmental testing and qualification of spacecraft structures and components; two aircraft, a Falcon-20 business jet and a T-33 trainer, for simulation of the space microgravity environment through parabolic flights. In addition, NRC Aerospace performs extensive research in space technologies to provide technical support to Canadian space industry. These include advanced capabilities in modal test and analysis of full-scale spacecraft and structures; shock modeling and simulation of spacecraft structures; development of control treatments and approaches to improve noise transmission loss in aerospace composite structures; analysis of the impact probability of spacecraft by micrometeorites and orbital debris in low earth orbit etc.

In summary, NRC Aerospace has the facilities and knowledge for development of novel techniques and approaches to meet new mission requirements in support the programs and needs of Canadian space industry, OGDs as well as international partners.