To the Moon, With Canada
Canada is playing a role in helping NASA build its moon base and helping an entire industry achieve liftoff.
It won’t be the first time we’ve stepped on the moon. But this time, the visit will be considerably longer than the couple of hours Armstrong and Aldrin enjoyed on their initial sojourn. Starting in 2029, NASA will begin building the Artemis lunar station—a $20-billion permanent moon base that will serve as a home-very-far-away-from-home for astronauts. And Canada is launching a serious push to be a part of the effort.
Call it one small step toward the moon and one giant leap for the True North: over the next several years, Canadian scientists and researchers will be hard at work building various next-generation systems intended to help out with continued lunar exploration and habitation, as well as training a coterie of astronauts to set up camp about 385,000 kilometres away from home. And in so doing, they may just give liftoff to an entire made-in-Canada aeronautics and robotics industry.
The showcase of the work: Canadarm3, the newest version of the 15-metre-long robotic arm with the prominent Canada wordmark seen on various Space Shuttle missions. The arm will be designed by Brampton-based MDA Space to work autonomously in orbit and on the lunar surface, with a range of specialized tools to help astronauts move and manipulate payloads, maintain station modules, and service visiting spacecraft. The company is also leading the development of Canada’s lunar utility rover, a heavy-duty, multi-chassis buggy capable of handling cargo, harvesting surface resources, and transporting building supplies around the pockmarked landscape, either in support of the Artemis missions or other international expeditions.
Meanwhile, Canadian Strategic Missions Corporation is hoping to make lunar life a little more habitable. In April, the company won the Canadian Space Agency’s Aqualunar Challenge for its LunaPure system, a device that uses solar cells to melt ice harvested from the moon’s shadowed craters, filter out any moon dust, and deliver drinking water to astronauts. With an additional electrolysis process, the water can then be separated into hydrogen and oxygen, the former supercooled and condensed in the -180°C lunar environment to be used as rocket fuel.
Whether NASA ends up officially selecting Canada’s moon tech for its upcoming missions is still up in the air. For as much as space may be the final frontier, proving that Canada can keep up with the world’s best has been the most significant challenge for our innovation sector.
