City company gets funding from Canada Space Agency

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on September 28, 2024.

Herald file photo - Blue Sky Spectroscopy, a Lethbridge-based high-tech spin-out of a research group formed in 2003 David Naylor, is one of seven companies across Canada in its category to receive funding from the Canada Space Agency.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

A Lethbridge company is one of seven across Canada in its category to receive funding from the Canada Space Agency.

Blue Sky Spectroscopy Inc. has been awarded $350,000 to create an “intrinsically calibrated multi-axis laser-based position metrology system suitable for cryogenic and space applications,,” says the agency.

It received the funding in the Space Research and Development: Small Businesses class for businesses that a have a maximum of 50 employees. It received the maximum contribution. The R and D projects are expected to last up to three years and produce economic benefits in the next five to 10 years, says the Canada Space Agency

The object of Blue Sky’s project is to “develop and test a new calibration method for a novel frequency-modulated laser interferometer that can measure up to eight axes with one laser/detector, which means less mass and complexity to build the system that controls precise positioning of optical components.”

Blue Sky is a Lethbridge-based high-tech spin-out of a research group formed in 2003 David Naylor who retired from the University of Lethbridge last December after a 42-year career in space astronomy.

This year, the agency awarded a total of $15 million in funding to 16 Canadian companies to pioneer research and development for 22 advanced space technology projects.

The initiative is aimed at using space “to drive broader economic growth by enhancing Canada’s space sector through the scaling up of firms, increasing the commercial potential, supporting the creation of high-paying middle-class jobs, providing support for small firms, and increase the readiness level of several promising space technologies,” says the space agency.

The funding was announced Tuesday at the 2024 Space Bound Conference in Ottawa.

“The Government of Canada is committed to helping unlock the full potential of Canada’s space sector by supporting organizations that play a crucial role in addressing challenges such as climate change, natural disaster response, food production, remote healthcare and improving Internet connectivity. By providing a wide range of opportunities to both established players and rising stars, Canada ensures a bright future for its space sector and continues to invest in innovative solutions to important issues, both on Earth and in space,” said a release from Ottawa.

The CSA has a space technology development program like all other agencies, said Naylor in a Zoom interview this week.

“They basically look for technology that’s being developed all over the world – it can be in a very small space like Lethbridge, it can be in a jet propulsion lab, it can be anywhere and they assess whether the technology could be useful in space and how risky it is. And they try to mitigate the risk by investing going forward in things,” said Naylor.

Small businesses are where space agencies see creativity and leading-edge technology, he said.

“They say ‘look, we think we’re going to need this in the future and we’re going to take a risk with you and try to develop it.’ We’re excited to get it,” added Naylor, noting the agency keeps their eyes out on small companies across Canada.

“It’s really competitive” and the agency needs to have people who say they’re interested in the technology being developed.”

Boeing is one company that’s interested in the work being done by Blue Sky, said Naylor.

“There are many cases in space where you need to perform precise measurements of something moving,” said Naylor about his company’s work, such as docking with the international space station. Another example is measuring vibrations of moonquakes. So if something is being built on the moon, it’s important to know the stability of that planet.

“What we’ve developed is pretty clever,” he said, with Blue Sky having developed a laser that can measure instantaneously eight different axis using one laser and one detector “which is really pretty incredible.”

Boeing is interested in how the technology will work with composites and measuring the stresses in composite materials in aircraft fuselages.

“They want to see if there’s a way to monitor the way that composites shrink when they cure. That’s really what they’re after and they think that we’ve got something that can do that. And we think that we do, too,” said Naylor.

The Canadian Space Agency wants to get into space and so does Blue Sky which wants to get its technology to the moon which is “the long game. But the first game is to prove that we can do it. So we’re busy trying to do this,” added Naylor.

The company is waiting to hear from NASA on another mission. If it goes forward, there’s a real possibility of the U of L leading ir, he said.

“The trouble is space missions are 20 years long, two decades cradle to grave. So this is the beginning of this NASA mission so I was never going to see it through,” said Naylor, noting the U of L has the first right of refusal on it.

“This is a parallel; I retired from my professorship and now I’m working with the spinoff company and it’s lots of fun.”

Blue Sky was started in October, 2003. It’s had numerous contracts with NASA and other space agencies and has three instruments operating in Antarctica.

Naylor says it’s also the only company in Canada contributing to diagnostics for the ITER nuclear fusion project in southern France where 35 countries are collaborating to build the world’s largest tokamak, which is a magnetic fusion device designed to prove the feasibility of fusion as a large-scale and carbon-free source of energy.

While space is the focus of Blue Sky Spectroscopy’s project, there are other applications possible for it on earth.

“We’re developing it for space which is really the most demanding application but there could be a whole bunch of other things,” added Naylor.

Naylor was part of Canada’s teams that were involved with the Herschel Space Observatory which made more than 35,000 observations and logged more than 25,000 hours studying the universe.

These teams were an integral part of the development and operations of two science instruments on board the European Space Agency’s telescope – the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) and the Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE), says the Canada Space Agency.

Naylor was the principal investigator for Canada’s contribution to SPIRE while Blue Sky was one of the project centres of expertise for its spectrometer and it has also developed data processing and science analysis software for the ground-based Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS).