Montreal Space Symposium 2019

Global government space budgets are in the early stages of a ten-year growth cycle with total world expenditures reaching $70.9 billion in 2018, and forecasted to grow to $84.6 billion by 2025. According to the research, the U.S. government continues to be the world’s largest investor in space programs, with China, Russia, France and Japan following in that order. Among other interesting findings, the research shows that two records were broken in 2018, with more government satellites launched than ever before and more governments launching satellites. Canada holds the 16th position in the world with regards to its government space budget. With 2018-2019 being an important year marked by the launch of RCM and the country's long-term commitments to the lunar gateway, the country's space budget is set for a significant growth in the coming decade, further affecting Canada's impact on the global space scene.

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.

Developed by Canadian young professionals and students, the titular theme of the UN Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC) “Canada’s Space Generation is Moonbound” will explore a fusion of thematic areas representative of today’s space industry and its plurality. It has been prominently developed to provide insights into the growing panoramic view of Canada’s modern space sector including its makeup – an evolving genetic identity highlighting the significance of inclusion and diversity, intermixed with diversity of ideas blending technical and non-technical domains. A major highlight is accessibility to space opportunities for the Canadian youth and international outlook for space exploration through sustainable partnerships. At its heart, the core of the session reflects on Canada's heritage in space and its future: the space generation terra firma ripe of collaborative opportunities, leveraging imagination as a pivot to exploration and innovation.

The outputs generated from the session will be consolidated into a report by SGAC. They will be redirected to key stakeholders, including the Canadian Space Agency Canada's Space Advisory Board, as well as internationally to UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN COPUOS), among others.

Reunion of all Quebec student rocketry teams answering all your questions regarding Student Rocketry. 

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.

Reunion between several experts from various disciplines who contribute to the quest for Life beyond Earth.

On May 11, 2019 Astronomy in Montreal was celebrated during the International Astronomy Day festivities at the Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium. Over two dozen Astronomy societies, student clubs, outreach groups, artists and companies partnered to provide 30 free public activities to an audience of 1500 visitors over a scheduled 12 hour period, overlapping with the 24 Hours of Science and Science Odyssey initiatives. This event was first conceived in discussions at the 2018 Montreal Space Symposium and included participation from more than a dozen post-secondary student groups in the Greater Montreal Area.

The Rio Tinto Alcan Planetarium and the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) Montreal Centre co-organized the event and will present the vision, activities, and feedback from this pilot event. An outline of next year’s possible format and theme will be discussed, with areas for returning partners to take the lead and new partners to bring their ideas and activities to this collaborative event.

This presentation will discuss recent, current, and upcoming space advocacy activities in Canada. What is space advocacy? How does the space community engage with government? How can the general public get involved? What role do students play? And what needs to be done? These are all questions that attendees of the Montreal Space Symposium need to think about if they want to have a hand in ensuring that Canada's future in space is as bright as it can be.

The Montreal Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) is comprised of approximately 175 amateur astronomers. As a group we obviously enjoy observing and exploring the night sky in a socially friendly environment, and as a second component of our mandate for over a century we host events and deliver activities in the Greater Montreal Area to share our passion of astronomy with the public. Over the past decades, these free public events provided by RASC Montreal Centre have been joined by a host of initiatives by other local clubs, organizations, and even private individuals…all with an aim to share our wonder, knowledge and experiences in Astronomy and Space Sciences with the general public. In this talk we will present an overview of the RASC Montreal Centre offerings, as well as a look at some of these various initiatives from outside traditional academia. Whether you call it public outreach or sidewalk astronomy, the net effect has been a rebirth of interest in the night sky within the Montreal region and beyond amongst the general public.

Il est connu que la microgravité présente dans l’espace occasionne une perte osseuse et augmente la fragilité des os des astronautes lors du retour sur terre. Les astronautes restent en moyenne de trois à six mois à l’intérieur de la Station Spatiale International (ISS) où ils sont aussi sujets aux radiations spatiales dix fois plus importantes que celles retrouvées au sol. La conférence exposera la magnitude du potentiel effet délétère de l’interaction entre l’apesanteur et les radiations ionisantes sur le système squelettique, spécifiquement dans l’ISS. En commençant par une courte revue de littérature pour poser les bases de l’actuelle compréhension de l’impact individuel de ces facteurs sur le remodelage osseux, ainsi qu’une description des techniques utilisées au sol pour simuler l’environnement spatial (hindlimb suspension, bed rest study). Il sera ensuite question de l’étude à laquelle j’ai participé, utilisant des souris males C57BL/6 suivant un protocole de suspension des pattes arrière afin de simuler l’absence de contraintes mécaniques sur les membres inférieurs retrouvée en apesanteur, en concomitance avec une irradiation ponctuelle aux rayons-X (25mGy) représentative d’une exposition de trois mois dans l’ISS. Le but étant de déterminer si l’irradiation serait suffisante pour créer des effets délétères sur les paramètres osseux, et si ces effets sont additifs ou synergétiques. Des analyses micro-architecturales et histomorphométriques ont montré que l’épaisseur des os trabéculaires et corticales diminuait (-16.77% et -10.98%; respectivement), alors que les marqueurs cellulaires de résorptions osseuse montrent une augmentation (34.70%) par rapport au contrôle. Les résultats obtenus suggèrent que l’irradiation a un effet délétère additif sur la perte osseuse et modifie la balance entre résorption osseuse (ostéoclastes) et formation osseuse (ostéoblastes). La conclusion montrera les techniques futures (microscopie confocal et histochimie) qui permettront une analyse plus précise des composantes cellulaires (ostéoblastes, ostéoclastes, ostéocytes) agissant sur le remodelage osseux.

The Next Giant leap for mankind: The world will be given a chance to fulfill their space exploration dreams and do something that has not been done since humans first stepped foot on the moon. Mars One will provide this opportunity.

A cutting edge and daring project, that aims to establish the first settlement on Mars. The good news is that the global search for the best candidates is almost over. We will soon be entering phase 3 of this project: Training Staff and the last 100 Candidates for this one-way trip to the Red Planet.

Since the 1960s, astronauts have pushed the radii of space exploration, putting the human body to the test while exposing themselves to challenging environmental factors. Asspace missions grow longer and more ambitious, health-monitoring becomes a primary factor in planning. The announcement of the The Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G), commonly referred to as the Lunar Gateway, has created a need for development of healthcare innovation that will monitor health of astronauts through Deep Space missions with less reliance on Earth. Let us explore the recent advancements in health technologies and project currently underway. What are the benefits of these innovations for space travel? What human factors are we most concerned about? Do these innovations provide any benefit to the quality of life on Earth?