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Canada's tiny satellite keeps an eye out for danger and opportunities from above


By , National Bureau

First posted: | Updated:

Artist rendition of the NEOSSat. DRDC Handout/ QMI Agency

Canada will soon have new eyes in the sky keeping watch for astroids that could cause devastation if they ever slammed into the Earth.

"This is the type of thing that isn't necessarily happening every day, of course, but certainly when it happens it's a significant event," said William Harvey, project manager for the Near-Earth Object Space Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) program at the Canadian Space Agency.

NEOSSat is a $25-million telescope-wielding satellite the size of a large suitcase, funded 50-50 by the Canadian Space Agency and Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC).

It's set for a long-delayed launch from India on Feb. 18.

NEOSSat will track asteroids' trajectories more accurately than has been possible so far, while also detecting objects that are too dark or too close to the sun for most Earth-based telescopes to see.

"Basically, everything operates on 80 watts of power," said Harvey. "There's no propulsion. It's just a box with momentum wheels, a camera, and a very large mission."

Harvey says another part of the mission is to identify dozens of possible candidates for "potential platforms for science experiments or observation" or for deep-space mining operations.

If that sounds like science fiction, it's not.

Two American companies, Deep Space Industries and Planetary Resources, have said their goal is to start extracting natural resources from asteroids as early as 2016.

NEOSSat will also track hundreds of satellites, space junk and other floating items to provide early warning of possible mid-space collisions that could damage or destroy expensive hardware.

DRDC scientist Brad Wallace says that's an important job for the satellite.

"That's all part of the traffic cop function," said Wallace. "We have to see everything that's out there."

Still, that doesn't mean Canada will be able to check out what other nations' spy satellites are doing.

NEOSSat will be too high up for that.

"It's a very difficult technological problem to be able to track these objects that are in low-earth orbit from where we are," he said. "We're not doing it. We cannot do that."

The other benefit from DRDC's perspective is testing the compact satellite's ability to point its telescope, power its camera and take clear pictures.

"We view this as helping to nurture Canadian industry to develop these technologies, to prove these technologies, so they can then be marketed to other customers," he said.

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