When Nathalie Nguyen-Quoc Ouellette was young, she didn’t see many stars in the bright skies over Montreal. But she would pore over the colourful, otherworldly images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and dream of becoming an astrophysicist.
“I really fell in love with space and astronomy,” she said. “There’s so much left to discover.”
Today, the deputy director of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at the Universite de Montreal moonlights as the outreach scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, a role that sees her connecting its science team with the general public and kids she hopes to inspire.
It’s a “truly fantastic” moment for space exploration, said Ouellette.
From the stunning early images produced by the powerful new telescope to the early success of the Artemis moon mission, the world’s fascination with space is going into hyperdrive.
And Canada is playing no small part in some of the headline projects that made aspiring scientists starry-eyed again in 2022, with major milestones yet to come.
But even as Canadian space experts wax poetic about the current landscape, they’re waiting to see if an influx in federal investment will continue despite domestic economic pressures.
For the team behind the James Webb telescope– named after the NASA administrator who led the Apollo program– it’s been a “very, very busy year,” Ouellette said.
The telescope, which sent its first dazzling images back to Earth in July, includes two Canadian components, and Canadian researchers are among those busy parsing its findings.
“In just a few short hours of collecting data it was already blowing previous missions out of the water,” Ouellette said.
She noted that a University of Toronto team discovered some of the oldest-ever globular clusters, or groups of millions of stars held together by gravity. And sometime in the first few months of 2023, researchers at the Universite de Montreal are expected to deliver the first analysis of the TRAPPIST-1 system, the home of seven Earth-like planets.
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NASA’s Artemis mission, which is planning the first human exploration of the moon since the ’60s, also saw major milestones this year.
The Artemis I flight, which saw the Orion spacecraft slip into a temporary lunar orbit, was expected to return to Earth on Sunday after a successful launch Nov. 16.
Next year, the Canadian Space Agency will announce which Canadian astronaut is joining the crew of Artemis II, which is expected to launch in 2024.
That move will make Canada the second country in the world to have a human go into deep space– or the region of space beyond the dark side of our Moon– said Gordon Osinski, a professor at Western University in London, Ont.
“I still don’t know how Canada pulled it off,” he said, calling it an “incredible coup” that a Canadian astronaut will be on board.
“Some of the images from Artemis I have just blown me away,” he said. “As someone who wasn’t alive during Apollo, seeing these images in real time is amazing. And so I think that’s going to be very inspirational, that mission.”
Canadarm3, the successor to two previous robotic arms engineered in Canada, is expected to launch in 2027, and its design by Canadian company MDA is already underway. It is expected to dock at the Artemis mission’s lunar gateway, an outpost that will orbit the moon.
Meanwhile, Osinski has been named the principal investigator for Canada’s first-ever rover mission, which is expected to land on the south pole of the moon as early as 2026. The design of the rover by Canadensys Aerospace Corporation will get underway in earnest next year, he said.
“People have been talking about this for a long time,” said Osinski. “For the past 10 or 15 years, we’ve been doing study after study. We’ve been paid to think about doing this and develop concepts for it. But we’re actually doing it, which is really amazing.”
Canadian Space Agency President Lisa Campbell said this has been “a really exciting time” for the national space program.
“It’s like a dream factory and an innovation machine,” she said.
Campbell cited myriad ways that Canada is involved with international projects in the public and private sectors that are focused on exploring the moon and beyond. But she also emphasized that Canadian efforts in space do not just go toward exploring its outer reaches, but also have applications at home.
The agency, Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada were promised $169 million in this year’s federal budget to deliver and operate a new wildfire monitoring satellite, which is expected to launch in 2028.
Canada is also part of an atmosphere observation project with NASA that will collect data to anticipate extreme weather events on Earth.
And in 2022, the agency launched a deep space health care challenge, a competition to develop diagnostic and detection technologies that can be used both on crewed deep-space missions and in remote communities in Canada.
“The challenges of space push us to innovate the things that we need here on Earth,” said Campbell.
Many moon-related projects, including the rover mission, have received funding from the Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program, a five-year $150-million fund that scientists such as Osinski are hoping will be renewed.
“I would hate us to have all of these missions to the moon in the next two, three years and that be it, and then kind of be back to square one,” Osinski said. “The CSA needs to convince the government that this is a worthwhile endeavour.”
While Campbell said the program has been “highly popular,” she wouldn’t say whether the federal government has committed to funding another term.
“Additional investments are always welcome,” she said.
The federal Liberals’ space strategy, released in 2019, committed Canada to remaining a space-faring nation and recognized “the importance of space as a strategic national asset.”
Space business needs boost: experts
Industry executives and experts say the country needs a booster to maintain an advantage in a sector poised to, well, skyrocket.
“We have a lot more experience having companies that make their way in space than a lot of countries do,” said Iain Christie, a longtime space executive and analyst.
“(But) we’re still dining out on work that was done 20 years ago.”
Until about a decade ago, space was a place for government programs and large militaries. The costs were too high for other players.
But factors including miniaturization and the availability of off-the-shelf technology have drastically cut those costs. So has the entry of private launch companies.
In 2000, putting a satellite into orbit cost $25,000 per kilogram. Now, depending on which rocket carries the load, it could be as little as $4,000.
“The cost of technology and the cost of launch decreased,” said Christie.
That created opportunity.
In 2011, Stephane Germain realized that increasing concern about greenhouse gas emissions was going to create demand to measure them, which can best be done from space.Today, his company GHGSat has six satellites in orbit, with another four planned over the next year. They’re able to measure gases such as methane with unprecedented resolution for both emitting companies and investors wanting to quantify their risk.
“Miniaturization got to the point where you could do something useful with a very small satellite,” Germain said. “We were looking for that opportunity (and) that wound up being GHG emissions.”
That’s one side of the space economy. Another is building infrastructure.
In November, Canadensys Aerospace Corporation announced it would build a lunar rover for NASA’s next moon mission. Weeks before, MDA Ltd., which also operates satellites, announced the second sale of their Canadarm technology to a company building a private space station.
The importance of those sales goes well beyond their dollar value, said MDA CEO Mike Greenley. They put Canada where the puck is going.
“There are opportunities to invest in lunar infrastructure,” Greenley said communications networks, electric vehicles, even space-based mining.
“There are a combination of new areas.”
Canada’s long history in space–it was the third country to launch a satellite– has also given it recognized expertise in techniques including synthetic aperture radar, which allows satellites to peer through clouds or at night with amazing accuracy.
It all adds up to an industry worth about $5.5 billion a year that employs about 23,000 highly trained Canadians, according to the Canadian Space Agency’s most recent report.
But that’s only a small piece of the global pie.
The European research agency Euroconsult pegged the entire value of the space economy– launch rockets, satellite communications and Earth observation– at about $500 billion in 2021. By 2030, Euroconsult says it will reach $860 billion.
If Canada wants a slice, it will have to sharpen its knife, said Ryan Anderson of the Canadian Space Society, a grassroots organization promoting space and space education.
“Canada has lost its step in terms of market share,” he said. “We’re a victim of our own success.”
While the country’s space economy is good at generating promising startups, not enough of them find the wherewithal to grow, said Anderson. That’s the fault of both government and the investment community, he said.
“Canada’s not as ballsy or risky as some other investment pools,” said Anderson.
Greenley agrees.
“Canada’s starting to drift behind a bit.”
Greenley said that when the International Space Station was the big game in town, there were five space agencies involved. Now, he said, there are 21 countries taking part in NASA’s Artemis program to the moon.
WATCH: NASA’s Artemis mission test flight blasts off toward the moon
He quotes the Euroconsult report that concludes Canada’s share of the global space budget is half what it used to be.
“A lot of countries want in,” he said. “We need to keep pace with the rest of the world.”
Countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have a high-level body to ensure the interests of the space economy remain in the forefront. Many in the Canadian industry say this country needs the same.
“Someone has to be bringing the importance of space to senior decision-makers in Ottawa,” Greenley said. “Ultimately, it’s a business environment but government does have a role.”
Christie said the federal government needs to be much more consistently interested in space. Canada needs to move beyond funding individual projects and develop an overall plan for the industry.
“The federal government does not invest as much in space industry as they get in return,” he said. “Canadian support for space is well down in the middle of the pack.”
After all, he said, there’s a tradition to defend. Canada has been leading the way in space for decades.
“We should spend a lot more time on a position that is hard-won.”
-With files from CP’s Bob Weber