Outsider's Guide to Canadian Space

The Canadian space sector is the third largest in the world by number of companies. This guide provides high level overviews into a sector many Canadians don't even know exists. As a work in progress, new entries are being added regularly.

Contents

🔭 Astronomy

Astronomy is a gateway to science and the larger space sector. One of the oldest human endeavours, it continues to awe and inspire, though little of the work is done with the naked human eye. In Canada, solopraneurs use crowdfunding options to bring astronomy to local settings.

  • Astronomy in Action - Teaching astronomy with portable planetariums and virtual programs for kids and adults alike.
  • Plateau Astro - Delivering one-man astronomy outreach through on-the-street telescope interactions, presentations, workshops, and events.

🎈Balloons

Humans launched high-altitude balloons long before the first rockets lifted anything into space. The area has progressed incredibly with new materials and techniques, and Canada has remained on the cutting edge. Today, balloons are used for weather and atmospheric testing, and as the first stage of delivering material to space.

  • Lux Aerobot - Providing Earth observation via stratospheric balloons.
  • SpaceRyde - Developing highly efficient rocket and balloon delivery to space.
  • Stratotegic - Delivering unmanned robotics for traffic control, overflight and high-altitude testing.
  • Worms in Space - how vermicompost might provide a significant advantage to humans trying to settle Mars

📞 Communications

Communication by satellite plays an important role in keeping a country as large as Canada connected. From West to East and North to South, people connect, do business, travel, and get entertained and informed because information flows. Canadian businesses produce products and services that put them in the upper echelons of providers and are sought by governments, institutions, communities and organizations across the globe.

  • Communications & Power Industries - Delivering satellite communications technology for Canadian contributions to international collaborations.
  • Eagle Flight Network - Delivering grounds station services to indigenous communities across the country.
  • Kepler Communications - Delivering space-generated data instantaneously.
  • Magnestar Inc. - Delivering a marketplace for satellite operators to understand and avoid radio frequency interference.
  • SpaceBridge - Delivering high-end, enterprise-grade broadband solutions outside urban environments.
  • Telesat - Delivering high throughput, low latency, always on satellite communications at affordable prices.

⏳ Competitions

Bringing together individuals and teams from across the country or across the world increases knowledge and relationships in unprecedented ways. Prize are only one aspects of the reward for involvement. While many competitions are limited to students, an increasing number provide segments for other adults.

  • Launch Canada - Delivering an annual national rocketry competition for students and school teams.

🌎 Earth Observation

Earth observation is exactly what it sounds like: trying to make sense of the Earth by examining imagery and other measurements taken by satellites. Drone and other sources of data routinely augment satellite observations. Increasingly, big data and machine learning and other digital techniques are making the information collected more useful or useful in more areas. Combining recent and previous observations creates opportunities to understand how the Earth and atmosphere change over time or in response to events.

  • Galaxia Mission Systems - Delivering plug-and-play satellite hardware for real-time Earth observation optimized with artificial intelligence techniques.
  • Lux Aerobot - Providing Earth observation via stratospheric balloons.
  • Metaspectral - digital image compression, storage & analysis
  • NorthStar Earth & Space - Mapping space for sustainable usage for government and industry clients.
  • SpaceAlpha Insights - Delivering Earth observation insights from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites to address global challenges.
  • Terris - Building 3D twinning technology from many different data sets for automated asset monitoring.
  • Wyvern - Delivering hyperspectral imagery satellites with on-orbit computational abilities.

💰 Funding & Associations

A capital intensive sector like space has different ways of getting money and support to companies that need it. Venture capital (VC) in the US creates many opportunities for large businesses and daring experiments, while in Canada it is still developing. Canadians have long banded together into collectives to improve their lot and associations are forming in the space sector, too.

  • Celestial Growth Corp - Investing venture capital into new space and space adjacent companies.
  • Space Canada - Banding commercial companies together to propel the Canadian space sector to new heights.

⚕️ Health

Health in space is still relatively unexplored. Despite collecting data for 60+ years, the number of astronauts who have travelled to space are few and a relatively homogeneous group of extremely fit males. Doctors and researchers are combing existing data sets and developing experiments to improve our understanding. In Canada, a surprising number of these efforts pay almost immediate benefits, especially applicable to remote and northern communities.

📸 Hyperspectral

Satellite technology is constantly improving and pushing the boundaries of the possible. Although radio frequencies, microwave and other optical techniques are far from fully exploited, hyperspectral promises improvements in the amount of data collected. Better information, combined with new analytical algorithms, lead companies to expect better insight and decision making.

  • Metaspectral - Delivering digital image compression, storage and analysis for Earth observation data.
  • Wyvern - Delivering hyperspectral imagery satellites with on-orbit computational abilities.

🧑‍🏭 Launch & Operations Services

Companies which focus on all the details required to get people or materials into space provide valuable services to clients and launch providers.

  • C6 Launch Systems - Providing launch services for domestic and international customers with its in-house rocket system launched from Brazil.
  • Mission Control Space Services - Delivering robotic control solutions for space environments and runs a testbed for robots and AI hardening in simulated environments.

📈 Marketing, Communications, Agencies

Consulting companies play an important role in mature advanced economies. By aggregating talent and then distributing it to companies where it is most useful, for those times when the consultant's skills are most helpful, the productivity of highly skilled people is improved. Some consultancies specialize in an obscure aspect of business or manufacturing, allowing employing companies to benefit from skills that would be extremely costly to develop in-house, especially for a startup.

🏭 Manufacturing

Manufacturing beyond Earth has three aspects:

  1. aerospace manufacturing to create the vehicles (rockets, robots, satellites, spacecraft, etc.) that go into and around space
  2. on-orbit manufacturing, and
  3. in situ manufacturing, where manufacturing happens on asteroids, moons, or planets.

In situ manufacturing is theoretical and aerospace manufacturing happens throughout Canada, though mostly in eastern Canada. Commercial on-orbit manufacturing happens on the International Space Station and 4 new US companies expect to launch private space stations between 2023 and 2029.

  • Canadensys Aerospace - Delivering commercial low-cost spacecraft and sophisticated vehicles, blending private-public partnerships, micro and nano space technologies with modern business approaches.
  • ITS Electronics - Delivering advanced electronics components internationally for commercial, government and defence satellite customers.
  • G2V Optics - Delivering solar power simulation to the largest players in the space industry.
  • Galaxia Mission Systems - Delivering plug-and-play satellite hardware for real-time Earth observation optimized with artificial intelligence techniques.
  • Magellan Aerospace Corp. - Delivering rockets, satellite bus platforms, avionics and assembly, integration and testing services.
  • MDA - Delivering geointelligence, satellite systems and robotics like Canadarm.
  • QShift - Delivering defence and manufacturing space consulting.
  • StarSpec Technologies - Developing COTS solutions for orbital and suborbital platforms.

⛏️ Mining

Getting material off of Earth currently costs ~$23,000 per kilogram. The further it must go, the more the cost. Resources found and developed in space, not needing great effort to get out of Earth's gravity, should be much cheaper. To develop a self-sustaining space economy, therefore, requires gathering resources rather than getting them from Earth.

🔋 Power

Power is an incredibly important topic in space. The power required to get into and then around space is part of the story. Another part of the story is generating power in space and sending it to Earth (i.e. space based power). Emergency power is one area where Canadian lunar rovers are planning to help others and reap a profit.

  • STELLS - Delivering emergency power to lunar rovers.
  • SPACE Canada - Advocating for down-to-earth approaches to space-based solar power.

🔬 Research & Development

In an area 60+ years old, research and development might seem like all the best areas have already been explored. Yet, space is still such an unknown quantity that areas of fundamental research and technology development are abundant. For example, physicists estimate the visible universe is only 5% of the universe and dark matter/energy (i.e. material we don't yet understand) makes up the remaining 95%.

  • C-Core - Delivering excellence in research and development in ice and geotechnical engineering and remote sensing.
  • Trottier Space Institute - Delivering fundamental interdisciplinary research in astrophysics, astrobiology, planetary and atmospheric sciences.

🤖 Robotics

Sending humans into space is expensive and time consuming, as they require levels of safety that machines do not need. While robots cannot yet handle as much complexity or deal with difficulties like humans, they will be our representatives, hands, ears, and eyes far into the future.

  • Canadensys Aerospace - Delivering commercial low-cost spacecraft and sophisticated vehicles, blending private-public partnerships, micro and nano space technologies with modern business approaches.
  • Clearpath Robotics - Delivering robotic platforms and software for autonomous research and exploration on Earth and beyond.
  • Mission Control Space Services Inc. - Delivering robotic control solutions for space environments and runs a testbed for robots and AI hardening in simulated environments.
  • NGC Aerospace Ltd. - Developing autonomous navigation and control systems for anywhere above Earth.
  • STELLS - Delivering emergency power to lunar rovers.

🚀 Rockets & Propulsion

Rockets and propulsion features controlled explosions and lifting massive equipment into space in dramatic shows, so many people love it. Beyond traditional rockets, propulsion systems being explored in Canada include advanced hypersonic engines and using balloons to lift the rockets to the edge of the atmosphere.

  • AVRO Aerospace - Delivering aerospace design and fabrication services and sounding rocket for sub-orbital research.
  • C6 Launch Systems - Providing launch services for domestic and international customers with its in-house rocket system launched from Brazil.
  • Magellan Aerospace Corp. - Delivering rockets, satellite bus platforms, avionics and assembly, integration and testing services.
  • Stratotegic - Delivering unmanned robotics for traffic control, overflight and high-altitude testing.
  • Space Engine Systems - Developing hypersonic engines from the ground up.
  • SpaceRyde - Developing highly efficient rocket and balloon delivery to space.
  • Reaction Dynamics - A rocket company making rocket fuel from RDX (the bangy-bit of plastic explosives).

🛰️ Satellites

Satellites are where the money is in Canadian space today. Whether for Earth observation, weather forecasting, resource management, communications or national defense, satellites play an oversized part in the equation. As a result, the number of technologies and companies in this sector is particularly rich. From Telesat which was founded in 1969, to startups like Wyvern and 4pi Labs launching their first craft in 2023, the activity is impressive.

  • 4pi Labs - Delivering space-based wildfire detection earlier, changing the wildfire fighting game.
  • Canadensys Aerospace - Delivering commercial low-cost spacecraft and sophisticated vehicles, blending private-public partnerships, micro and nano space technologies with modern business approaches.
  • Galaxia Mission Systems - Delivering plug-and-play satellite hardware for real-time Earth observation optimized with artificial intelligence techniques.
  • GHGSat - Detecting natural and manmade sources of methane for private and public clients.
  • NorthStar Earth & Space - Mapping space for sustainable usage for government and industry clients.
  • Obruta Space Solutions - Providing satellite owners and operators with on-orbit services.
  • SpaceAlpha Insights - Delivering Earth observation insights from synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites to address global challenges.
  • SpaceBridge - Delivering high-end, enterprise-grade broadband solutions outside urban environments.
  • SkyWatch - Delivering data aggregation and single-point sales services for consumers and distributors.
  • Telesat - Delivering high throughput, low latency, always on satellite communications at affordable prices.
  • Wyvern - Delivering hyperspectral imagery satellites with on-orbit computational abilities.

🛩️ Small Aerospace Shops

The space sector is capital intensive, yet solopreneurs and small shops are doing interesting things while using crowdfunding to make a living.

  • Beyond Blue Aerospace - Delivering suborbital space plane R&D, pilot training, and encouraging amateur rocketry.
  • Astronomy in Action - Teaching astronomy with portable planetariums and virtual programs for kids and adults alike.
  • Plateau Astro - Delivering one-man astronomy outreach through on-the-street telescope interactions, presentation, workshops, and events.

🧪 Testing

"Know before you go" is an important principle in launching anything, on Earth or above. Simulation and testing is the best way to know what could go wrong, how robust equipment is, and how to handle worst-case scenarios. Canadians create space testing and simulation services used by missions from around the world.