The Canadarm2 robotic arm, seen in 2019 working outside the International Space Station, has contributed to Canada's reputation as a leader in space robotics.NASA
Marc Garneau was the first Canadian astronaut to go to space and is the former president of the Canadian Space Agency. As a federal politician, he has served as Liberal house leader, minister of transport and minister of foreign affairs. He is the author of A Most Extraordinary Ride: Space, Politics, and the Pursuit of a Canadian Dream.
I first flew in space 40 years ago, launching from the Kennedy Space Center aboard Challenger on Oct. 5, 1984. While it was a historic moment for our country, and an extraordinary personal experience for me, it was not Canada’s first foray into space. We had already been there for more than two decades, beginning with the launch in 1962 of the Alouette 1 satellite, making us the third country, after the Soviet Union and the United States, to design and build its own spacecraft.
When I flew, I had only a vague awareness of what Canada had already achieved in space, and I certainly did not realize why space was so important for a country like ours. In due course, I would learn that Canadians had been pioneers in space and that we were very good at it, with an enviable record of success in a very complex and demanding field.
So, why is space so important for Canada? The simple answer is because it has allowed us to achieve important national objectives. Canada was quick to grasp this from the beginning.
While the public is often most interested in human space flight, going to space is about much more than humans living on a space station or going to the moon or eventually to Mars. It’s also about building the invisible space infrastructure that helps us monitor what is happening to our planet, communicate with each other, predict the weather, measure our precise location, and understand the origins of our solar system and, perhaps, even of the universe.
When I speak to young people about space, I hold up my cellphone and ask them what makes it possible for this device to communicate with virtually anyone on the planet or tell us precisely where we’re standing on its surface. What allows us to move massive amounts of data around the world, almost instantaneously? What makes it possible for us to accurately follow the course of a hurricane spinning off the coast of Africa and heading across the Atlantic? How is it that we can measure pollutants in the atmosphere, humidity levels in crop soils, ice coverage in the Arctic, and numerous other changes occurring on the Earth’s surface, in its oceans and its atmosphere? The answer, in large part, is because of that invisible infrastructure of satellites, orbiting high overhead.
Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau, seen training in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab for the STS-97 mission, first flew into space in 1984, and has returned twice since then.NASA/NASA
From the very beginning of the space age, with the Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957, Canadian visionaries such as John H. Chapman and Colin Franklin realized the tremendous potential that space offered to improve our lives. Nowhere was this truer than in Canada, the second-largest country on Earth, with its vast resources, its challenging geography and its sparsely populated regions.
No one said it better than Chapman, when he led Canada’s efforts to use communications satellites to link Canadians across our vast expanse: “In the second century of Confederation, the fabric of Canadian society will be held together by strands in space just as strongly as railway and telegraphy held together the scattered provinces in the last century.”
Arthur C. Clarke’s dream of placing satellites in equatorial orbits more than 35,000 kilometres above the Earth, where they would remain over the same point on Earth, thereby allowing global communications, became a reality with the advent of rockets capable of launching spacecraft into these orbits. The Canadian government was quick to seize upon this, realizing that it could finally connect Canadians over vast distances, including those in the most remote northern regions. It created satellite operator Telesat Canada in 1969, and Canada became the first country in the world to operate its own national network of communications satellites, beginning with the launch in 1972 of Anik A1. At the same time, Canada focused on designing more powerful satellites, working at higher frequencies that pioneered direct-to-home TV broadcasting using small antenna dishes; all of this to better connect its citizens.
In addition to this, Canada also wanted to use space to observe our entire country, including our lakes, waterways and surrounding oceans, on a near-continuous basis. This would allow us to monitor the Arctic’s receding ice cover, as well as the effects of natural disasters or major oil spills at sea. RADARSAT-1, launched in 1995, became our first Canadian “eye in the sky,” enabling the entire country to be mapped over successive orbits. The far-reaching decision to use radar instead of optical cameras meant that the surface of the planet could be observed through cloud cover, day and night. Successors to RADARSAT-1 have been launched in the past three decades, providing images of the planet’s surface shared around the world.
Not only that, radar-based sensors are now being used in new roles, such as the detection of vessels fishing illegally on the high seas – so-called “dark vessels” operating with impunity and threatening global fish stocks, an important source of food for many countries.
More recently, it has become increasingly urgent to monitor in real time the large-scale effects of climate change and their devastating consequences, whether it’s the global ice cover melting at an unprecedented rate, massive forest fires and severe flooding, or the increasing number of hurricanes. Not only are lives and property at risk, so is the planet’s biodiversity.
Earth observation from space clearly offers us opportunities to supplement Earth-based observation. A case in point is Canada’s decision to build and launch by 2029 a constellation of satellites dubbed “WildFireSat,” to monitor the thousands of wildfires occurring annually across Canada (and elsewhere around the world), with the objective of identifying those requiring the most urgent use of limited firefighting resources.
Another reason that drew Canada to space was the desire to expand our scientific knowledge of the Earth and its environment. Canadian-built space instruments have allowed us to better understand the interaction between the sun and the Earth, including the solar wind’s interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field, producing the spectacular aurora borealis, and the effects of solar storms on power grids here on Earth. Canadian space instrumentation has also allowed us to track how pollutants in the air are transported around the globe.
Science has been an important driver in many Canadian space projects, allowing us to contribute instruments to NASA Mars landers and to the James Webb Space Telescope, not to mention build our own spacecraft, such as SCISAT-1, focused on measuring changes in the ozone layer and other atmospheric constituents.
While Canada’s early space program allowed the government to achieve specific national objectives, it was also instrumental in helping develop a space industry that became internationally competitive and world-leading in specific areas. For example, Telesat has chosen our largest space company, MDA Space, to build its global Lightspeed constellation of 198 low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites to digitally connect Canadians and customers worldwide.
That desire to create an innovative space sector is what led the government to propose to NASA in the early seventies that Canadian industry design and build a robotic arm (known as the Canadarm) for the U.S. Space Shuttle. Since then, we have become the recognized leader in space robotics.
Sometimes, one initiative leads to another. When Canada contributed the Canadarm to NASA, it received something in return: the opportunity to fly two Canadians on their Space Shuttle, which gave birth to our astronaut program. Today, Canadian astronauts are recognized for their important contributions to human space exploration. To make the point, Canadian Jeremy Hansen will join three NASA astronauts to become the first non-American to fly around the moon when the Artemis II mission launches, likely some time in 2026.
Another benefit of investing in space is building relationships with other space-faring countries. Designing a spacecraft that can endure the brutal ride to orbit and then operate for many years in the hostile vacuum and temperature extremes of space is no easy feat. Working with other countries allows important synergies and reduces individual nations’ costs. Because of those partnerships, Canada has been able to achieve what might otherwise have been beyond its budget and capabilities. The International Space Station is one of many examples of what can be done when countries work together.
As we look to the future, I will conclude with a plea for increased Earth observation from space. While we live on a beautiful planet, it is not a place of inexhaustible resources and unending resilience – a view that may not be obvious to some Canadians, given the vast, resource-rich country we live in. My own experience of going to space 40 years ago (and twice more since then) profoundly changed the way I view life on Earth. From space, I have seen the large-scale damage we are inflicting, sometimes unwittingly, sometimes deliberately, on our planet. I have seen our great forests burning, our soil being washed away through flooding and deforestation, and our atmosphere being polluted by vast clouds of smog. Our assault on our planet has been relentless. This experience has strengthened my conviction that we all share this planet. If we destroy its atmosphere, its land and its oceans, there is no Option B.