The Canadian Space Agency Gave Out Almost $5Mln CDN in Grants and Contributions Last Quarter!

          By Henry Stewart

CSA Disclosure of Grants and Contributions Awards Page. Screenshot c/o CSA.

It's worth noting that recent stories and press releases focused around individual Canadian Space Agency (CSA) initiatives are really only a partial representation of the funds provided through the CSA at any one time.

These include stories such as the October 21st, 2016 CNW Telebec post, "Une nouvelle technologie médicale de pointe sera mise à l'essai dans l'espace - Cette technologie de surveillance peut être utilisée sur Terre pour les soins de santé," focused around the astroskin smartshirt and the upcoming health experiments planned for the International Space Station (ISS) as discussed in the October 18th, 2016 Globe and Mail post, "Canadian Space Agency to conduct health experiment on space station."

To get a true sense of what's happening, you need to visit the CSA disclosure of grants and contributions awards page, a quarterly compilation of CSA grants and contributions to third parties. of over $25,000 CDN.

InSAR images created using the homogeneous distributed scatterers (HDS) technique, showing deformation from multiple surface types including asphalt. As outlined in the December 2nd, 2015 Earth Imaging Journal post, "Learn the Ground Rules: InSAR Enables Proactive Urban Infrastructure Monitoring,"  provides multiple examples of InSAR data being used in a variety of ways. In Q2 2016, nine of the fourteen CSA grants awarded focused on new uses for InSAR data. Images c/o MDA Geospatial Services.

CSA first quarter totals for 2016/17 (from April - June 2016, the last period for which data is available) include fourteen grants to eleven organizations for a variety of research and experiments. They include:

Two grants to the University of Waterloo covering:

• A project to develop a methodology for the generation of ice thickness and bathymetry products of shallow lakes using RADARSAT-2 interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR. ($50K CDN) 

• A project to develop an understanding of the coupling mechanism between glacier ice loss and slope displacement using interferometric analysis of RADARSAT-2 data. ($50K CDN)

Two grants to the University of Western Ontario covering:

• A project to integrate InSAR and polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) in order to develop a more robust and systematic method to accurately map urban development changes over time in order to represent the associated land subsidence rate. ($50K CDN) 

•  A project to determine if the salt on Axel Heiberg Island (Nunavut) is still rising, and if so, at what rate. The main objective will be to use InSAR measurements (likely also from RADARSAT-2) to quantify the upwards motion of diapirs, a domed rock formation in which a core of rock has moved upward to pierce the overlying strata. ($50K CDN).

 Two grants to York University covering:

• Another project to exploit RADARSAT-2 InSAR data, this time focused on permafrost characterization to "establish the relationship" between surface deformation between freezing and melting "as well as the active layer characteristics." ($49.8K CDN)

• A second grant, this one for substantially more money (although the amount allocated would be expected to cover more than one fiscal year) to cover an experiment on the perception of self-motion (POSM) in space. According to the description, the project will investigate the "amplitude of motion evoked by a given pattern of optic flow by measuring how far a participant needs to “travel” in a simulated environment to reach a previously viewed target." ($786K CDN)

A 2013 Environment Canada (EC) poster outlining the development of Canada’s carbon assimilation system. In Q2 2016, the University of Toronto received a CSA grant to integrate new data derived from satellite measurements, into the program. Graphic c/o EC.

Individual grants were also awarded to the following universities: 

• The Global Institute for Water Security, at the University of Saskatchewan, which received one grant for a project to investigate the capabilities of InSAR based RADARSAT-2 data in generating a high resolution digital elevation model. ($50K CDN)

• The Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS), a part of the Université du Québec, which received one grant for a project to monitor different types of land movement in the Greater Quebec City region for the period of 2008-2016. An emphasis "will be placed on expanding (data collected through) InSAR's." ($50K CDN)

• The Université de Sherbrooke, which received one grant "to use RADARSAT-2 SAR interferometry combined with a hydrodynamic model" to study the hydrodynamics of the Peace-Athabasca Delta in northern Alberta. ($49.5K CDN). 

• The University of Calgary, which received one grant to investigate the use of InSAR for quantifying estimates of calving from polar glaciers in Canada's Arctic. ($48K CDN). 

• The University of Toronto, which received a single, but substantial grant to extend the Environment Canada carbon assimilation system (EC-CAS), which monitors CO2 and CH4 concentrations across Canada, to include data collected from the measurement of pollution in the troposphere (MOPITT) scientific instrument. MOPITT was launched into Earth orbit in 1999 as part of the NASA Terra satellite. ($240K CDN). 

As outlined in many previous articles, including this February 23th, 2014 post on "Canadian Firm Plans to Corner the Worldwide Rover Chassis Market," the CSA has previously attempted to develop rovers it can resell to other space programs. Its most recent attempt is its $1.2Mln CDN grant to Canadensys Aerospace Corporation in Q2 2016. Screen shot c/o Commercial Space Media. 

Of course the obvious big beneficiaries of CSA largess in the first quarter of 2016 were three privately held corporations, which together received $2.7Mln CDN of the almost $5Mln CDN disbursed in total. They include:

• Bolton, Ontario based Canadensys Aerospace Corporation, which received a single large grant worth $1.2Mln CDN in order to develop a Deep Space compatible nano-platform architecture that can be tailored to support a variety of new low cost robotic exploration missions. 

• Sherbrooke, Quebec based Menya Solutions, which received $532K CDN to develop algorithmic software designed to allow robotic mechanisms to reason, "anticipate events, plan and execute complex behaviors autonomously."

• Quebec City based NorStar Space Data Inc., which received $972K CDN in order to pursue the development of a constellation of LEO satellites equipped with hyperspectral sensors called NorthStar.

It's also worth noting that nine of the fourteen grants presented by the CSA during this quarter went to various universities in order to develop new uses for InSAR derived data.

At present, the primary Canadian supplier of InSAR data is Richmond, British Columbia based MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA), which collects it as part of its RADARSAT-2 responsibilities.

That might change over the next little while. As outlined in the October 18th, 2016 post, "A Quick Update to 'Iconic Macdonald Dettwiler is now SSL MDA Holdings, a US Based Company,'" MDA seems more focused on growing its US business than on maintaining what were once its core Canadian assets.

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Henry Stewart is the pseudonym of a Toronto based aerospace writer.