UFOs are out, UAPs are the new hotness

I grew up used to the phrase "Unidentified Flying Objects" (OVNI in French). On the eve of a possible paradigm shift in our understanding of what's out there, there's a new acronym in town: UAP, "unidentified aerial phenomena".

The fashions change, but the core concept is the same.

I wanted to quickly write this blog because (probably!) the Pentagon UAP Task Force will release the unredacted parts of its report tomorrow, Friday June 25 2021, to the US Congress and (possibly!) it will gently hint and/or strongly indicate that something that we don't understand exists and (just maybe?) it could indicate we are in fact being visited by extra terrestrial or at least non-human technology.

Another Copernican Revolution?

Nicolaus Copernicus in 1514 published a new model of astronomy where the Earth and planets revolved around the sun, and not the other way around. While this concept had been discussed before he basically initiated a process that changed the way we humans understood the solar system and our place in it.

Since one of the most fundamental questions we can ask is, "are we alone", finding evidence or at least strong indication that we aren't is likely to have a similar impact to our species and our future development.

So, tomorrow's Pentagon report to Congress (if it happens!) will not be the first time people have claimed extra terrestrials are visiting the Earth (if they say that, which is doubtful), but it may have the same rippling impact as Copernicus' Commentariolus.

Extraordinary Claims

In March 2017 I wrote about the search for extraterrestrial life in “Where Are They?” A New Estimate of Alien Civilizations Is Both Exciting and Scary.

I tried to summarize some of the existing understanding of the likelihood of alien life as well as the question about why we couldn't see it:

Another theory: Maybe we have been/are being visited after all! Popular culture is full of conspiracy theories about alien visitation, including Roswell, Chariots of the Gods, the Prometheus movie, and so many others. If aliens are visiting Earth, then obviously there is no longer any Fermi Paradox.

I personally don't believe in alien visitation, since to quote the very wise Carl Sagan again: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". If there was extraordinary evidence of alien visitation, we would see it and know it.

I still cling to Carl Sagan's dictum. At the time of writing this, no report has been released, only a few people know what it says or doesn't say, and there is more heat and smoke than light.

And yet!

Open Minded Optimism

I think it likely, based on our current scientific understanding of how vast and old the universe is, and how inventive and tenacious life is on our planet, that alien life is almost guaranteed in the universe. And if that's true, then it means the possibility of it visiting us cannot be zero.

Given the emergence of authenticated US Navy recordings, credible eyewitness testimony, and recent news reports, I am increasingly intrigued by the possibility that in fact we are being visited (by drones, if anything).

However while we should be open minded we shouldn't rush to any judgement. We need to turn the full light of open-minded, international scientific inquiry on the question and treat it seriously.

Maybe tomorrow I will post about how the UAP Task Force report is the start of the new Copernican revolution. Maybe tomorrow is just another Friday in our corner of the solar system, and our understanding of our place in it.

But today I will close with a statement by Neel Patel which I previously quoted in my blog:

“There’s certainly never been a better time to be an E.T. optimist.”

The post “Where Are They?” Are They Here? appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

“Software is eating the world” said Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, in 2011.

He meant that every industry would be transformed through software. Therefore, every company needed to become a software company.

He gave as an example a company we will talk about shortly: “the world’s largest bookseller, Amazon, is a software company – its core capability is its amazing software engine”.  

An industry “eaten by software” would be one where practically every business transaction, important decision, and product or service offering would be facilitated or made in software, usually in a partially or fully-automated fashion and driven by big data. The industry leaders would strongly resemble – or be – software companies. Insurgents would be able to battle incumbents through lower barriers to entry and superior service offerings delivered using online services. The complexity of the underlying industry would be largely hidden from business end users, who would easily consume the services as and when they wanted.

None of this seems to apply to the space industry:

• The great achievements and advances in the space industry have been hardware advances. We think more readily of the rocket and hardware technology, and not the underlying software and data crunching that may support it.
• We would not describe the core capabilities of major space organizations as “amazing software engines”.
• Their product offerings are rarely available for online shopping.
• We cannot task an EO satellite from our mobile phone.
• An insurgent cannot beat an incumbent through the superiority of their web services.
• Many of the key transactions and service delivery processes involve numerous (usually highly technical and trained) human players

So software hasn’t eaten the space industry – why?

Why Hasn’t Software Eaten the Space Industry Yet?

One factor may be that the space industry has traditionally and understandably focused more on hardware technology advances – “space is hard” and launching and maintaining things in orbit is incredibly risky, expensive, and difficult. A risk-adverse industry does not want to “move fast and break things” via a faulty software patch.

Until recently, launch rates were low and missions required planning and hardware decisions made far in advance. This mean that available processing power to run space software has lagged far behind what Silicon Valley would consider the cutting edge and limited what could be used.

National security considerations and the role of government as the primary customer may also have played a role in determining what code was viable. The cost-plus contracting model may have discouraged software evolution since there was no downward pressure for development costs. And without many non-government downstream clients, the industry has remained a niche one for software development.

No doubt there are other reasons, but the result seems clear: software has not yet eaten the space industry. It remains heroic and epic, yet also human and analog.

This is now changing rapidly.

Space-as-a-Service

The industry is subject to numerous pressures and influences including New Space business models, reduced launch costs and increased launches, and the wide availability of artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing technologies. The COVID pandemic and climate change impacts have begun to cause global economic, social, and political ruptures that will surely accelerate these trends and provide fertile ground for industry insurgents and innovators.

When Andreeson talked about the move to online services, he was referring to what we now familiarly call “as-a-service” offerings (the main kinds are Platform, Infrastructure, Software, and Data).

Characteristics of these as-a-Service models are:

• They are metered (pay per use).
• They are ubiquitous (they are available globally, with internet connectivity).
• They can scale up from thousands to millions of users.
• They are configurable by their users.
• The service provider can rapidly innovate and add new features.
• They use popular open software coding protocols for easy software integration.

I believe we are witnessing the rapid emergence of Space-as-a-Service, which is another way of saying “software is eating the space industry”.

I first blogged about the Space-as-a-Service concept in 2013, crediting Canadian company Urthecast as a pioneer.

I speculated that a space-as-a-service model would include the common characteristics of the others but would also:

“have to provide capabilities that the other -as-a-Service models could not, simply by virtue of delivering its capabilities from space. So, the litmus test is: what does the service platform offer that is unique to its extraterrestrial environment?”

And on that note…there have been some earth-shaking announcements recently.

Binary Stars

Microsoft just announced Azure Space, a “new initiative that will deliver innovation to serve the mission needs of the space industry”. They are collaborating with illustrious partners like SpaceX and SES to offer improved access to satellite Earth Observation data, internet connectivity, ground station services, and more.

Examples they give are “integrating SpaceX’s ground stations with Azure networking capabilities”, “[SES using] Azure Orbital as a key platform to provide cloud-based managed services such as enhanced security, SD-WAN and other network functions”, and “[allowing] Azure Orbital customers…to use the [KSAT] platform to schedule satellite contacts and bring data to Azure for processing and storage.”

They join pioneer Amazon, which launched AWS Ground Station last year. That offering gives any company in the world the ability to leverage ground station hardware – without much complexity – via online software services. As well, Amazon recently announced the appointment of Peter Marquez as the company’s first-ever head of space policy, indicating the sector’s growing important to their organization.

Owner Jeff Bezos is visibly committed to space exploration – his company Blue Origin is the business proof, but I actually think his personal involvement in buying the Expanse television series for Prime Video is just as important because it shows that space is a real passion project of his, and therefore the sector is close to his heart.

So, to recap:

1. The wealthiest person in the world personally loves the space industry; and
2. The top two software development and cloud companies think it is a critical business sector and are partnering to deliver space hardware capabilities via simple a-la-carte online software services

This proves the viability – in fact, the inevitability – of space-as-a-service, and the rising importance of software development to the space sector.

More: it tells us that Microsoft and Amazon are likely to become binary stars of this new firmament.

They already exert enormous gravity on software developers, because developers in every industry are familiar with them, can build solutions quickly and easily on them, and have career incentives to sharpen their skills on these platforms.

Now that Microsoft and Amazon are starting to integrate their space services directly into their ecosystems – assisted by major space industry partners – their gravitic pull will massively increase until they become impossible for anyone in the space industry to ignore.

To extend my metaphor, Microsoft and Amazon’s gravity fields will pull and push each other around the sky. Even government space agencies will be affected by the perturbations of their cosmic dance.

And by making these software and partner ecosystems easily available to software developers and companies, they lower the barriers to entry. Software developers and other insurgents will be pulled in inexorably like meteor swarms, lured by profit and opportunity to shake things up.

Fast Forward 10 Years

The space industry is famously forward-thinking, so let’s explore a hypothetical business scenario which unfolds over the next decade:

1. Today, Year One, company A and company B offer exactly competing space hardware services: satellite constellations that can monitor the Earth’s atmosphere. Company A invests heavily in software development support. Company B spends that equivalent time, energy, and money focusing on operational needs, some product enhancements, and sales and marketing efforts
2. Year Three: Company A is getting some traction with developers, but only has some “toy” or prototype projects to point to. Company B is clearly ahead: their focus on anything but software development has visibly improved their bottom line.
3. Year Five: Company A has an extensive network of developers and technical partners, and some working solutions and case studies. It is quick and easy to integrate their capabilities into business solutions. They are tightly integrated with the Amazon and Microsoft marketplaces. They recently landed their first major deal that was unambiguously due to the quality of their software. Company B is beginning to stall: their software is hard to use, there is very little uptake from the developer community, and they have no buzz.
4. Year Seven: Company A’s open source components are widely used, understood, and taught in schools and online courses. Partners have now embedded its software directly in popular products and value-added extensions. Company A is now receiving a regular and increasing stream of OEM and subscription revenue. IT managers and tech leads are adopting their technology because its tested and proven. Company B sales have stalled and they have been firmly overtaken, not by any flaws in their core competency (their hardware and core service offering is now superior) but because they did not flourish in the software developer ecosystem and their competitor did.
5. Year Ten: Company A buys Company B and integrates its offerings into the Company A Software-as-a-service platform.

The Butterfly Effect

Does this sound like a fantasy scenario?

It may be reassuring for a space industry incumbent to think that every one of their key business decisions is made in the (now virtual) meeting rooms by their execs – no doubt after long-term planning and analysis. Or that the hardware capabilities are the core differentiator and “moat” a competitor cannot cross.

In a space industry being eaten by software, this may no longer be true!

Important software development decisions are made daily at very junior levels, usually without executive or even managerial oversight.

They could be setting unexpected changes in motion.

Think of the Butterfly Effect, only the butterfly flapping its wings is the most junior developer who downloads an open source software component which accidentally becomes firmly embedded in the middle of the company’s EO service offering. Maybe the butterfly is the tech lead who picks the core data ETL pipeline suite with unexpected far-reaching consequences to a company’s competitive advantage (or disadvantage).

What Happens Next?

This is now the story of how software eats the space industry.

Amazon and Microsoft’s recent moves have made that fate inescapable.

The key point is software development-driven decisions, and the use of online services, are going to increasingly affect the competitiveness and strategic direction of everyone in the sector.

The story of how software eats the space industry will no doubt be an epic tale with ups and downs, fascinating themes, and dramatic incidents and conflicts. There may not be obvious heroes and villains, but there will be a host of characters. Everyone will be forced to play a part.

It is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” story.

Time to think about our next steps!

The post Software Will Eat the Space Industry appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

I'm busy helping organize the fourth annual Space Apps Ottawa hackathon, which is the local version of the NASA International Space Apps event. This year it will be held from October 2 to 4.

I love the hackathon so much that it directly inspired me to pivot my company Deploy Solutions into the space industry - more on that in a future post :).

After three previous years of helping to organize the event, I had the feeling our group had everything sorted out.

COVID-19 Changes Everything

But then COVID-19 hit!

The global pandemic didn't really affect our organizing efforts since we've been working remotely from each other the whole time. But, it will force us to hold the actual weekend event entirely online, instead of in a physical venue (in past years we have been kindly hosted by Carleton University's Technology Innovation Management program).

This has all kinds of impacts, ranging from how to manage registration, video calls, codes of conduct and privacy rules for participants, all the way to whether and how we can provide "swag" to attendees.

Change can be positive too. By moving online, we are able to work closely with other organizing teams in Canadian cities. This is an idea we have talked about in previous years but COVID-19 really turned that conversation into reality.

We are now working closely with the other Canadian cities and getting strong support from the Canadian Space Society (CSS) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). All told, this will be an interesting and probably pivotal year for the event. We may never go back to a fully physical event again. And the partnerships and collaboration experience we build will hopefully strengthen in future years.

We few, we happy few, we band of hackers!

Join Us!

Ottawa, prepare for liftoff! The NASA International Space Apps Challenge is an intense 48-hour global weekend hackathon for developers, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, astronomers and enthusiasts. Along with nearly 200 cities around the world, Ottawa teams will form and build products and prototypes against NASA- and CSA-designed challenges that leverage spacecraft, celestial and science data. This FREE and entirely VIRTUAL event will run from Friday evening, October 2 to Sunday, October 4. Find out more, including how to register, at http://www.spaceappsottawa.com. You can also learn more about the global event at https://www.spaceappschallenge.org/.

I hope to see you there!

The post Space Apps Ottawa 2020 Hackathon – October 2 to 4! appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

For those who don’t know, the hackathon is an intense 48-hour global weekend coding event for developers, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, astronomers and enthusiasts. Along with over 200 cities around the world, Ottawa teams worked all weekend to solve NASA- and CSA-designed challenges that leverage spacecraft, celestial & science data.

Hosted at Carleton University’s Technology Innovation Management (TIM) program, we had the support of so many organizers, volunteers, mentors, judges, and organizations.

Checkout the video one of our organizing team took. We obviously had a blast!

You can learn more about our event on our website. There will be a Space Apps Ottawa 2020!

The post Space Apps Ottawa 2019: Mission Accomplished appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

This event was the original inspiration for my blog, and the start of my personal journey into the world of space exploration.

The promise on the CSS website was this year’s three-day summit, held November 27 to 29, would be “bigger and better than ever” and it was a promise kept. It was held at the posh Brookstreet Hotel in Kanata, seemed to boast bigger attendance, and was in fact multiple events in one: co-hosted with the new Satellite Canada Innovation Network, it featured the regular annual CSS summit, a Canadian Space Policy Symposium, and a SatCom Canada workshop to

focus on the massive disruption in satellite communications coming from LEO constellations and the Internet of Things

Congratulations to Minh On, Ryan Anderson, and all the volunteers and sponsors for another entertaining and informative event.

CSS Annual Summit Organizers Minh On and Ryan Anderson

May You Live In Interesting Times

I’m not in the space industry, and when I first started attending in 2013 I didn’t know anyone or anything. Last year I felt on more familiar ground, and this year the connections were really clicking in my head. I’m starting to know about the technologies, missions, people and players, thanks to these events and the daily SpaceQ newsletters.

Having said that, it’s pretty clear that the ground is changing abruptly under everyone’s feet.

There’s an equal amount of certainty and uncertainty.

What is certain: The cadence of satellite launches and the growth of the space industry is dramatically increasing.

So far this week there has been a Soyuz launch with Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques, and SpaceX launched sixty-four satellites on a booster that has been reused 3 times! And that makes 19 launches by them this year, a pace that is a world record.

Many of the summit presentations began with a bar chart showing the page of satellite launches, and projecting future trends. The current space economy (largely based around satellites) is valued at $330B this year (Space Foundation). By the 2040’s, Goldman Sachs thinks it will be worth $1 Trillion, Morgan Stanley says $1.1 Trillion, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicts a value of $2.7 Trillion. Not all of that will involve rocket launches or satellite missions, but those will underpin this projected value.

What is uncertain: What the near future looks like in terms of Canada’s participation in the space industry.

At the summit there was a palpable sense of urgency and and a mix of unease and excitement. The space industry is in upheaval, and Canada is losing ground relative to other countries. Many presentations demonstrated a year-over-year decline in Canada’s contribution to the space economy.

That drop explains the prominent “#Don’tLetGoCanada” campaign launched by industry, which hopes to lobby the Canadian government into continued / expanded spending on space activities, as well as the launch of a new #SpaceMatters campaign on Twitter, which wants to educate and inform Canadian citizens and inspire our youth to study science, engineering, technology and math.

#DontLetGoCanada Sponsors

O Brave New World

These trends in the space industry haven’t happened overnight. The trends have been heavily influenced by market and technology pressures from the NewSpace companies, not least SpaceX, Blue Origin, and NanoRacks, which are helping to commoditize rocket and satellite launches. Over the years I’ve recorded many of their activities in this blog, and there is definitely much more going on than ever.

In attendance at the summit were many NewSpace companies hoping to land deals, figure out the market opportunities, and showcase their brands and technologies.

They included Planet which offers on-demand Earth surveillance and OneWeb which wants to provide high speed connectivity from a Low-Earth Orbit constellation which will be launching shortly. Homegrown companies included Sinclair Interplanetary which engineers satellite components, GHGSat which provides satellite-based global emissions monitoring services for industry and governments, Mission Control Space Services which wants to deliver low-cost, innovative solutions to problems in space and on earth through technology development and industry consulting, and Skywatch which consolidates Earth Observation data from various providers and makes it easy to include in downstream software applications.

Holographic exploration of maps

We’re Rapidly Heading Downstream

In the space industry there is the concept of the “downstream” – the applications (usually telecommunications providers or software applications) that make use of the satellite data or services.

What I found noteworthy was that with one or two exceptions, I was probably the only modern/web software developer in attendance. If the launch and investment predictions are correct, who will be building software applications downstream? I repeatedly asked panelists and attendees what this summit would look like in 5 or 10 years. Will the scientists, engineers, and policy-makers who attend it currently be outnumbered by business-people and software developers looking to integrate a new commodity, EO data, into their systems?

If so, what needs to be done to encourage their participation?

I am one of the organizers of Space Apps Ottawa, the local version of the NASA Space Apps Hackathon. In a 48-hour period, participants address challenges using publicly-available space-based data (and the resulting solution is often working software). I believe strong grassroots efforts are needed to encourage our students and software developers to build software applications using space-based data. These initiatives will build an important bridge to the future downstream industry.

Panel on student initiatives in Canada

Canada Space Agency and our Natural Resources Canada department provided a great deal of support to our event this year. This included posing some interesting challenges, and providing us not only with some of their satellite data sets but with sustained technical support and subject matter expertise. Perhaps this is an area where Canada can reassert itself in the space industry.

The level of Canadian government participation this year is a very positive sign, because currently downstream users need that to navigate some very complicated waters.

Rocks Ahoy

Although I don’t work in the space industry, I’ve started writing experimental web software using some of the Canadian satellite data sets. Right now that is a complicated and frustrating process. I’ve had to spend a lot of time asking around the space industry to even determine what’s available, and then perform various unsupported software experiments to learn the “art of the possible”.

Currently there isn’t one specific place to access Canadian government satellite data, and the policies and timings around making it available to Canadians seem to be in flux. In order to improve that, the Canadian government could:

1. Centralize the hosting of its Earth Observation and satellite telemetry data
2. Provide samples of proprietary datasets in formats that software developers can use. This will allow businesses tp experiment with non-public datasets quickly and cheaply, before deciding whether to purchase
3. Provide reduced licensing fees for students, not-for-profits, and startups
4. Wherever possible, make satellite data available under the permissive Open Government license. Make this a fast and transparent process.
5. Whether the data is open or not, allow automated system-level access via an industry standard (RESTful API) so software of all types can quickly download it without human intervention
6. Provide a service desk that can assist with technical and business support, 24×7. This would range from user self-service (after hours) to incident responses according to some service level agreements. Businesses needing critical support would be able to pay for that level of service, while less-critical support levels would be inexpensive or even free
7. Provide a developer portal for government space data, including sandboxes, API keys, and a metered amount of calls per month, with comprehensive documentation and examples
8. Provide a software development kit in multiple popular software development languages, including python, .NET and Java
9. Provide source control access to the code utilities and data via Github or similar.
10. Provide a curated software app marketplace so consultants, independent software vendors, and satcom providers can publish their algorithms, software products, and value-added services easily and widely, just like on a Shopify site (heck, hire Shopify to do it!)
11. Publish a roadmap of feature, data-set, and service availability, to help businesses plan ahead.

These are some of the steps that will smooth out the rough downstream waters, and unlock the vast potential of this downstream software development market, which will directly affect Canadian citizens in the coming years.

There’s a famous saying: “Software is eating the world”. Well, software is going to eat the universe too!

Let’s at least make space data easy to digest.

Space needs YOU!

The post O Brave New World: Canadian Space Society Annual Summit 2018 appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

Keynote Speaker – Sylvain Laporte, Canadian Space Agency

• Sylvain Laporte is the President of the Canadian Space Agency
• He spoke about CSA achievements and priorities, including deep space exploration
  • Cislunar space: Why the moon? Things still to learn about the moon, the Earth, and living in space.
  • Canada is getting ready: Rovers, robotics, innovative ideas
• An upcoming medical conference will look at how Canada could contribute some medical capabilities to future missions to Moon and Mars.
• STEM Outreach – to encourage young people to go into STEM fields, using our Astronauts. “You should see young eyes light up when an astronaut in a flight suit walks into a gym”. Big positive feelings and some learning to make big impacts on children that will hopefully lead them to choose career in STEM field. He said 100 activities in last year reached about 20,000 people.
• He says CSA used hiring of new astronauts to showcase to the public how talented Canadians are. CSA knew exceptional individuals would apply. When down to 70 applicants, their bios were posted on their website. CSA wanted to instill a sense of pride in Canadians, and heard that these candidates were role models to young people. Led to lots of media coverage and social media contacts. So without paying for any publicity – all through 100% social media, they achieved 22M impressions on social media.
• Space is evolving: Faster, cheaper, easier.
• CSA has adapted too. They have put together 5 communities in various fields with objective of making sure CSA is understanding of what is out there, through eyes and ears of specialists in those fields. Regular meetings to make sure CSA is open, engaged, and receptive to new ideas. Also looking at modernizing processes.
• STDP Modernization – R&D program where companies and universities can get funding to do Space Technology Development Program. Now collaborating with industry to form 6 or 7 working groups on a number of subjects to modernize R&D program. Some improvements: subject matter experts say it is hard to compete with large companies, so they wanted access to their own funding pool. Now some non-space companies are starting to apply which is ground-breaking.
• Developing skills: For last 2 years, CSA has run national conferences and competitions to eventually present a paper at the IAC conferences. Helps hone their skills and networking abilities. Then try to do match-making exercise to help them get employment opportunity at the CSA (summer job, co-op).
• Cubesat program – with university, goal is to fly a nanosat from each province and territory (13 of them). Plan to launch each nano-sat in 2019. The students will see something they built fly into space. Binding emotional attachment with knowledge. There for life.
• CSA contributing to state of the art missions: James Webb space telescope (the 2 most critical components – fine guidance system) and OSIRIS-Rex (laser altimeter).
• Future is closer than we think. Next Canadian in space is David St-Jacques.
• RADARSAT constellation mission launches in 2018.
• Continually modernizing agency, outreach to universities. Dynamic, exciting, at the leading edge of science. CSA is both a developer and a consumer of disruptive technologies.
• Q: In next budget request, will you be asking for dedicated outreach budget request. A: CSA has found the funds, and will continue to dedicate funds from our current budget.
• Q: With so many creative ideas being submitted, will those be published? A: Clearly those ideas we want to pursue will be fully public as part of a RFP process. Otherwise, for those ideas not chosen, he is not sure if there are privacy elements restricting publication – he will check up on that. In terms of time frame, right now they are in the middle of a selection process, but likely mid-2018 as purely a guess.
• Q: About CSA public outreach – will there be opportunities for universities to participate. A: Yes, public outreach won’t just be from CSA. Quite a lot of collaborative efforts with not-for-profits, and universities.

Carleton University students with their rover “Sparky” (named after a minor electrical incident)

Plenary Speaker – Dr Gordon Osinski, University of Western Ontario

• Dr Gordon Osinski, a geology teacher from the University of Western Ontario, spoke about the Benefits of investing in Canadian Space Exploration
• Why space exploration vs Earth observation?
• Canadian university grads are leaving the country – Brain Drain.
• Why we explore:
  • Because it is there
  • international collaboration
  • new technology
  • answer the big questions
  • inspiration, the economy
  • perspective
  • long-term survival
  • protecting and understanding our world.
• Proposal for Canada to contribute to an ice sounding radar to the NeMO missing to scan MARS upper surface of regolith to pinpoint water-ice deposits.
• Canada $1.6 B in 2016 of mineral exploration investments. Canada major mining and resource extraction nation.
• But significant expenses for Arctic exploration:
  • Length travel times
  • Difficult logistics
  • Short summer for operations.
• Dr. Oz is on Canada’s Space Advisory Board: “What we heard” during consultations.
  • Strengthen world-class Canadian capabilities
  • Outreach and education programs for Canadians
• Possible routes for outreach: Yuri’s Nights, Scientist in Residence, Western Worlds podcast, International Observe the Moon Night, World Space Week. Summer Space Camp.
• He ended by saying: Let’s tell the story of Canada in space!

Missions and Programs Session

UrtheCast presentation at Missions and Programs

• Presenters were Dave McCabe, Senior Customer Business Manager, Space Systems, Honeywell Aerospace; Larry Reeves, President, Canadian Satellite Design Challenge Management Society, also with UrtheCast; and Vibooshon Sriskanda, Aerospace Student, CubeSat Team of Carleton University.
• The panel started with a Honeywell presentation on Canada’s technological achievements since the 1950’s and 1960’s.
• Larry Reeves from UrtheCast then talked about how UrtheCast went into Earth Observation role which is rapidly evolving and growing
• UrtheCast has 250 people, 100 are with Deimos Imaging (from Spain).
• Planned future satellite constellations:
  • UrtheDaily: 6 satellites all optimized for daily 360-km swathe in sun-synchronous orbit collecting consistent, reliable, and daily coverage of Earth’s landmasses (minus Antartica and Greenland)
• Unfortunately I was only able to catch part of the session.

That’s it for my Day 2 notes, which are more episodic than on Day 1, since I had to leave at noon.

The post Canadian Space Society Annual Summit 2017 – Day 2 appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

Co-Chair’s Welcome

CSA Summit 2017 ready for kickoff

• Co-chairs Minh On and Ryan Anderson kick things off explaining the summit’s theme: “Canada’s Next Space Generation”.
• The theme is obviously forward looking. What does the next 50 years look like?
• The key message is “Canadians are ready to push the limits of space” – what does that look like, in terms of building new technologies, leading science missions, creating start-ups or innovative applications?

Platinum Sponsor Keynote – Mike Gold, MDA

• Mike Gold is the Vice President of Washington Operations and Business Development, Space Systems Loral (SSL)
• Mike says we are in an era of change. He talks about commercialization of space, the speed of change that has never occurred before (even in Apollo days?).
• Feels turning point to Commercial Space was NASA’s COTS/CRS program (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services = commercial purchases of ISS resupply launches of cargo, and eventually crew). First time when gov’t went back and said “we will do this [space launch development] differently”. Procurement methodology before was cost+ (meaning cost of service plus guaranteed profit percenage) which incentivizes you to spend more money, as opposed to fixed price which encourages vendor innovation and cost savings. $106M USD investment brought back commercial space flight to America – Mike feels it is the best investment NASA ever made. Elon Musk said without this program there wouldn’t be a SpaceX today.
• Commercial Crew – now extending mission from just flying cargo, to flying crew.
• Mike talks about MDA work on Satellite Assembly project which will build satellite once it hits orbit – such as for radio reflectors, gigantic structures. But still sponsored by the gov’t as a catalyst and then transitioned to private sector.
• Also mentions DARPA public-private partnership with MDA to do Satellite Servicing. This will change fundamental nature of satellites cost and capabilities. NASA’s RESTORE-L = provide satellite repairs and upgrades in-orbit, even if satellite wasn’t built to be serviced. Should fix deployment failures, which are common. Can also inspect satellite, and can replace technology, providing some future-proofing. Since technology changes so fast – it can do upgrades. This changes very nature of what satellites are, and how we can use them.
• One of the great things about commercialization of space, is that it promotes international cooperation
• Discuss new Deep Space Gateway strategy, which is concept of having a portal orbiting the Moon, way stations, robotics missions.
• His question: What should Canada do? Since the moon is the target (for now), both private and public sectors should figure out where we fit in to lunar architecture. Mike feels robotics is a real opportunity given Canada’s historical contributions in that area.
• Obviously feels gov’t has continued key role to play in driving commercial innovation.
• Q: about ITAR reform impact. He feels reform makes it better for satellite operators.
• Q from me about other technologies – most of the conversation in Canada seems to be about satellites, robots, rovers. What about Canada encouraging development of 3d printing, internet of things, big data and machine learning, biomedical, and other applications? He says we need to leverage downstream applications (usually meaning data products, back on Earth). Feels this can be catalyst for other applications of space technology. He says a lot of 3d printing is being developed for the space program. He talks about Maxar organization which is the parent of MDA, doing various things. They have to look at tech transfer – providing economic and technological spin-off benefits to people who aren’t familiar with space industry. Feels private sector won’t necessarily do that itself.
• Q about In-Situ Resource Utilization and how important that is. Mike says wherever humans go – there will have to be robots first, to prepare the ground, and prove the technologies. Again emphasized role of public-private partnerships.

Keynote Speaker – Dr. Kazuya Yoshida, ispace inc.

White Rabbit Presentation Canadian Space Society Summit 2017

• Dr. Yoshida is Chief Technology Officer of ispace inc., in Japan.
• His presentation is called “Space Exploration: Challenge to the Moon and Beyond.”
• He works at Space Robotics Lab. Dept of Aerospace Engineering. Tohoku University, Japan. Director of Center of Robotics for Extreme and Uncertain Environments
• CTO of ispace
  • Worked on Free-Flying Space Robot demonstration mission ETS-VII in 1997-1999
  • Worked on Hayabusa (asteroid sample return probe 2003-2010)
  • Also lunar/planetary rovers prototypes and their sensing and navigation algorithms.
• Satellite types
  • Microsatellites (50kg) for scientific missions
  • Small satellite: 100-500 kg in wet mass.
  • Micro: 10-100 Kg in wet mass
  • Nano: 1 – 10 kg
  • Pico: less than 1 kg.
  • Cubesats might take 6 months to build, can stay in orbit easily 2 years or more.
  • Small satellites can do very high-resolution images of the earth.
• Lunar/planetary robotics
  • Rover test beds in Tohoku Uniersity.
  • Design, test, and build their designs.
  • Videos of 2-wheel, 4-wheel, 6-wheel and track designs
  • Suspension system – “rocker-bogie” showing good performance for rough terrain mobility
  • Problem of slip and skid of wheels while exploring: A surface covered with soft soils, means wheel slippages/skids are unavoidable. This can cause critical situations (immobility due to wheel spin, side slide, or tip over) which must be avoided.
  • Need to maximize the traction performance and power efficiency.
  • Two modeling approaches for study of soil behaviours under a wheel:
    • Discrete element method
    • Continuum modeling
  • Demonstrated videos of slip-based traction control experiment, with and without slip control.
  • Sensing and Navigation
    • Laser 3d range sensor
    • Tele-operation (interactive tele-driving)
    • Demonstrate remote operation via satellite communication network.
    • Autonomous navigation with path planning and execution.
    • Omni-directional camera. Useful for taking selfies of rover (allows observation of its health and status)
    • Hazard detection and avoidance
  • Google Lunar X Prize
    • $30M USD cash prize (biggest ever)
    • Private activities must travel 500m travel on the moon, with HDT video transmission
    • Must launch, go to moon, land on it, travel 500 metres or more, take pictures.
    • Dr Yoshida decided to start his own company to compete.
    • Only 5 active teams remain due to difficulties.
    • Their entry is called Hakuto – “White rabbit”, which is an official GLXP team and the only team from Japan, with technical support from Tohoku U.
    • Started in 2010. Created a rover test bed for ground testing.
    • Design is compact body and as simple as possible. Omnicam camera, 4 wheels, no steering wheels, but by changing velocities on wheels, can change direction. Have tested in volcanic places and beeches.
    • Manufactured by themselves, using their micro satellite practices.
    • Testing: Vibration testing for launches, thermal/vac testing. Field testing (showed videos).
    • Trying to partner with one of the teams to handle landing – working with Team Indus. Hakuto + Indus +  PSLV (ISRO)
  • Beyond the Lunar X Prize
    • Scientific discoveries (volatiles and caves)
    • Cold trap on the moon –
    • Resourcing prospecting – scanning by multi-robots.
    • ISRU – In-situ Resource Utilization
    • Moon village
    • Lava tunnels – potential location for human village (explore using parent rover, tether, and child rovers). Parent stays in sunshine. Child rover descends, with mechanical tether for power and information exchange.
    • Also interested in “cliff hanger, rock climber” robot (bio-mimetic inspiration): useful for asteroid exploration. Video of robot rock climbing using gripping hands.

Start-ups Panel

• • This was the panel I most wanted to attend, but I missed the start of the panel due to a conflicting client engagement.
  • The panel was chaired by Eva-Jane Lark, and included Ewan Reid, President and CEO of Mission Control Space Services, Stephane Germain, President and CEO of GHGSat Inc., and Nathan De Ruiter, Managing Director of Euroconsult Canada
  • Nathan De Ruiter, the Euroconsult speaker, talked about differences between New Space and Traditional Space:
    

    New Space	Traditional Space
    Low cost model	High cost, high quality
    Software driven	Hardware driven
    Application oriented	Techno push
    Standardization	Customization

• A New Space ecosystem forming, around:
  • Access to space
  • Resource exploitation/exploration
• Stephane Germain spoke  about the need for the following three things in a New Space startup: Technical Solution, Business model, Financing. Feels Canada does pre-commercial stuff very well, but does not do aggressive growth or public offering / investment capital activities so well. As an example, he says for his company, financing for next round coming entirely from America. Feels that in the USA, it is understood the gov’t can only do so much whereas in Canada we rely heavily on government involvement.
• As a result, he spends much of his time in California – where the satellite venture capital is.  He calls that the “Gravitational Pull” for New Space startups.
• As a result, the challenge with new space startups is the early phase of growth.
• Nathan De Ruiter, speaking about incubators: UK had nothing about 5 years ago, now they have created a community for space startups. Provided example of Luxembourg to develop new offering to support New Space players.
• Eva-Jane Lark asked the panel about accelerator programs: She noted that Mission Control Space Services has been involved in Carleton U accelerator (and Ewan said that support was provided without any equity sacrifice – an extremely significant benefit to any startup).
• Ewan spoke about the important of SRED and IRAP programs.
• Evan-Jane asked: What kind of advice would you give to a startup? Ewen says IRAP is amazing, money appears quickly. SRED is the opposite. Cash flow is the big consideration for a startup. CSA “gets” space, other investors may not, so de-risking their investment decision is important. He said to address challenges with cash flow and prepare for a great deal of paper work for some of the programs.
• Stephane Germain says space should be considered a national strategic resource in Canada, as it is in the USA. And the space industry and government must be able to explain to tax payers whey their dollars should go to space. He spoke about risk: his company GHGSat wouldn’t be in business without CSA and SDTC (a Canadian agency) who took big risks on them.
• Stephane feels government should buy space “services” – rather than purchase or develop its own assets.
• Nathan De Ruiter says when his company analysts look at New Space business plans on behalf of investors, they want to know what the key clients are and how secure are the revenues. Having gov’t is an ideal client since there is no “risk” – so that’s a major plus for any business models.
• Eva-Jane Lark: credibility for something that has gone into space is huge – therefore there is a chicken-and-egg problem. There are flight opportunities available such as in NanoRacks missions (and SpaceX). It would be good to have more opportunities for these space companies to demonstrate their technologies in the real world.
• Eva-Jane then asked Nathan about the due diligence process they follow when analyzing New Space startups on behalf of investors. Nathan feels it’s a very technology-driven industry, and many investors are not educated about that, so it takes time to educate them. Sometimes mistakes are made where startups follow a “if we built it, and demand will follow” approach, which is a common space-industry approach, but not always a good one. He feels you need secured revenues to seduce investor community to participate and cover the risk.
• The panel noted that the satellite industry never really talks about itself as being in the “space industry”, but instead talks about telecommunication, or satellites, or media services. They also noted that it is common in Canada to do debt-financing rather than equity investments.
• Stephane says he feels there more openness to debt financing in Canada, in part because of government investment guarantees (such as Investisement Quebec, Export Development Canada, etc). This takes some pressure off the company owners. But if Canada wants to be a serious player in the space industry, it needs to establish a better investment market for the space industry.
• I asked a question about whether it would be beneficial to create a New Space incubator in Canada. Someone on the panel suggested that it might be good to not be “space-specific” and noted that there are lots of existing incubator programs. However someone else noted that many of those are local or industry-specific, and it might be useful to have a lot more focus on incubating New Space companies than simply as part of other broader industries.
• Q: How do you find people? Ewan Reid suggested that space is “Sexy”, and lots of technical people apply to them, as a result. However his company still has to compete with Silicon Valley salaries. Nathan De Ruiter mentioned that Eurosoft (a French company) explicitly expanded into Canada in part due to our space talent pool.
• Nathan mentioned UK and Luxembourg startup nurturing. Ewan mentioned Mission Control’s use of the Carleton University accelerator. Stephane discussed how they attract venture capital.

Innovation Plenary

• Participants were Dr. Kazuya Oshida from ispace inc, Dr. Zoe Szajnfarber from George Washington University, Larry Reeves President of Canadian Satellite Design Challenge Management Society and from UrtheCast, and Monsi Roman the Centennial Challenges Program Manager for NASA.
• Monsi Roman began by discussing historical prize challenges (Orteig Prize, Ansari XPRIZE)
• She then explained the NASA Centennial Challenges (www.nasa.gov/winit)
  • Their prizes can be long-term, $100k to $1M divided into phases. No particular date limit.
  • NASA wanted to put together a commemoration program for Wright Brothers flight.
  • Why Centennial Challenges works: Pays only for success. Allows for multiple solution paths. Encourages innovation. Involves the public.
  • Current challenges:
    1. 3-d printing a habitat for Mars.
    2. Robot workers.
    3. Bio-medicine.
    4. Making a long-distance call from Earth to a destination in space.
• Dr Yoshida:
  • Discusses White Rabbit project which is part of Google Lunar XPRIZE.
  • Nobody has returned to the moon since Dec 14, 1972!
  • Suzuki is providing technical support to the team.
  • The team made videos to convince people that this challenge was worthwhile – needed corporate sponsorship.
  •  Early 2018 the hope to land on the moon (in late December they are going to India to prepare for launch).
• Larry Reeves President, Canadian Satellite Design Challenge Management Society
  • How to inspire the next generation
  • Given them a challenge, and opportunity
  • Support / guidance / mentorship
  • Design and launch a cubesat.
  • CSDC has given students a valuable and marketable educational experience
• Dr. Zoe Szajnfarber, Professor of EMSE and Space Policy, George Washington University
  • Open Innovation (OI) broadly describes situations where YOU the seeker leverage external contributions from solvers to solve your problem.
  • Mechanism 1: Ex post selection from the right tail. If you let enough people throw darts, somebody will eventually hit the bullseye. You can pick the right solution after-the-fact.
  • Mechanism 2: Distant experts who see problems in new ways.
  • Three types of suitable problems:
    • Distant expert search. Problem: expertise matters. You need a Solver, who is “freakishly good” – meaning outside of the norm. Process: identify solver ex post.
    • Variability reduction. Problem: High uncertainty in solution. Solver: Joe or Jane Average. Process: Pick solution ex post.
    • Force multiplier. Problem: Low skill threshold, high workload (algorithms not good enough). Solver: Joe or Jane Average. Process: Use all inputs above threshold.
  • How complexity impacts mechanisms.
    • Mechanism 1: Ex post selection. As the target moves farther away, less of the random shots have a chance. Only professionals will get close.
    • Distant experts:
  • Our strategy:
    • Decompose: Fit with existing org, lots of simpler pieces. Lower capability threshold.
    • De-contextualize: ie. Move from aerospace problem to more general material science problem. Increase solver pool.
    • Re-contextualize: Material science problem goes to more specific solar cell problem. Reach particular experts.

Space Exploration Panel

• Participants were Dan King, Director Business Development Robotics & Automation, MDA; Dr. Al Scott, Scientist at Honeywell, and Dr. Nadeem Ghafoor, VP Space Exploration at Canadensys
• Dan King discussed how Canadarm was such as success Story. $100M CDN initial federal government investment resulted in $1.2B CDN of exports
• Canada at the forefront of on-orbit servicing
• Canadarm was a ticket to explore for Canadian astronauts
• Canada built rover lidar for Mars mission
• Also doing test phase for ExoMars (2020) controller software for rover.
• Dr. Al Scott talked about some terrestrial spin-offs of space technology:
  • IGAR Breast Biopsy system (medical)
  • neuroArm (Medical)
  • BrightMatter Drive (Medical)
  • CANDU Inspection & Refurb (Nuclear)
  • Remotely Operated Vehicles (Security)
• Dr. Ghafoor asked, what is space about today?
  • Technology miniaturization is being driven by a commercial approach.
  • Sustainability.
  • Lowering entry barrier for new players. Space becoming more accessible.
  • Increasing # of new countries and commercial enterprises that are now participating.
  • Application Driven: Make money on the applications rather than on the space hardware itself.
  • New business models.
• What is space about in the future?
  • Modern lunar exploration.
  • Small missions: 1st gen lunar nano orbiters. 2nd gen: nano surface systems.
• Dr. Ghafoor discussed how physics becomes a problem for small systems – high power, energy storage, dust, vision, comms, range, payload, thermal control.
• Commercial collaborations: lunar observatory, cislunar infrastructure, small affordable missions, resource characterization and extraction, gov’t and commercial exploration
• The panel says they are eager to hear more in the future about software, embedded systems, robotics & mechatronics, AI and machine learning, Micro and nanosatellites, STEM education, women in engineering, entrepreneurship.
• Panel emphasize important of downstream applications and public/private partnership. This was an ongoing theme throughout the summit.

Keynote Speaker – Michel Forest, Telesat

• Michel Forest, Director of Engineering at Telesat, presented “Transforming Satellite Communications”
• Telesat is getting lots of satellite internet demand from cruise ships, and airlines which want onboard wifi
• Enterprises want secure internet from remote areas. Cloud application access is key.
• So Telesat trying to do fibre-like connectivity from satellites, by reducing latency.
• Their planned LEO satellite constellation will be 5x faster than MEO and 20x faster than GEO satellite constellations.
• LEO systems provide fibre-like responsiveness.
• Want to have 291 satellites in polar and inclined orbits, which will provide the coverage and capacity needed. Hybrid configuration allows to address both global coverage, and flexible distribution of capacity, without having too much excess capacity.
• However, polar and inclined orbits do not communicate with each other due to complexity.
• Global gateways distributed across the globe – located to serve different markets. Global Network Operations Center (NOC) is based in Ottawa.
• With LEO satellites it is possible to have fast, secure connectivity to enterprise and cloud systems.
• Target users: Rural & remote connectivity. Satellite backhaul. Fiber complement. Aviation connectivity. Maritime connectivity.
• Question about de-orbit plan with so many satellites – Telesat has one but details were not provided.

Plenary Speaker, Ryan Anderson from Satellite Canada

• Ryan, one of the Summit co-organizers, also represents a new space interest and advocacy group called Satellite Canada.
• He mentioned that an article written back in 2000 spoke about Canada being at a crossroads in space.
• He feels we are past the crossroads, but now hanging on the edge of a cliff. He feels ISED (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada = a Canadian Federal government department) understands the importance of innovation. Changes are afoot at the Canadian Space Agency. He mentioned the creation of the Canadian Space Advisory Board. Also innovations at other government or space advocacy groups such as SEDS Canada, CSDC, etc. Still, he feels that there is a danger of innovation that is going to hit a wall of indecision and confusion in terms of Canadian government space policy, and not have any firm directions in which to go.
• His response was to work with Andrej Litvinjenko to help organize the SatCan Innovation Network, which was the result of a percolating set of ideas revolving around superclusters initiative.
• Ryan and Andrej decided to propose a Satellite-focused super cluster of companies and apply to the Canadian government’s Super Cluster proposal.
• Unfortunately, ISED didn’t accept the super cluster proposal. But Ryan and Andrej are continuing on with a focus on core themes:
  • Technology leadership.
  • Partnerships for scale.
  • Diverse and skilled pools.
  • Access to innovation.
  • Global advantage.
• He further notes that up to 80% of the staff of Canadian satellite companies are eligible for retirement in next 10 years.
• Canada is a small market, so we have to look hard at what to commercialize.
• There are lots of incubators but nothing to help with CSA proposals, and legal and administrative assistance.
• So he and Andrej intend Satellite Canada to be a neutral convenor of stakeholders, and between up and downstream technologies.
• To that end, they
  • Want to help develop skills. They are working with universities to develop programs that are related to satellites.
  • Form investment attractors like the Harwell supercluster in UK.
  • Provide specialized equipment access.
• Ultimately he says he sees Satellite Canada as 3 things:
  • Economy-wide investment
  • Urgent response to industry challenges
  • Proven model for space success

That’s it for my Day 1 notes, since I had to leave and skip the Gala Dinner. My summit notes continue on Day 2.

The post Canadian Space Society Annual Summit 2017 – Day 1 appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

So much has changed since then.

The tempo of space exploration and missions has dramatically increased, driven in part by New Space companies (non-traditional, non-government space participants) which have made amazing advancements (some of which you can see celebrated right here). It’s now a given that private companies can be key participants in even the most complicated space missions.

With that in mind, the Canadian Space Society dedicated the theme of this year’s summit, held in Ottawa on Nov 21 and 22, to “Canada’s Next Space Generation”, which:

“…will speak to Canada’s future in space and provide a spotlight on the up-and-coming leaders of Canada’s space sector. By highlighting the next generation of industry leaders, space engineers, scientists, and astronauts, the CSS Summit will explore the changing nature of the global space industry and the evolving nature of how we incorporate space into our daily lives.

In Canada (and especially in Ottawa), we have a long-established and powerful traditional space industry, mainly geared toward satellites, robotics, and telecommunications. Nothing wrong with that – it’s a source of national pride and economic strength – but it leaves Canada a bit light when it comes to these new trends, since a lot of time and money is focused on the established Canadian players.

We did hear from a few New Space companies such as Ottawa’s Mission Control Space Services and Vancouver’s UrtheCast (which I’ve blogged about here and here). It will be important in future years to hear directly from students, NASA space apps hackathon participants, and perhaps a virtual panel can be arranged with New Space startups from around the world so we can get some “outsider” perspectives.

On a personal level, I have become much more familiar with the space industry in Canada, and the people in it. At this year’s summit I saw many familiar faces, including organizers Minh On, and Ryan Anderson (who I worked with on Ottawa’s inaugural NASA Space Apps Hackathon this year).

I was pretty keen to attend – Ryan informed me I was registrant # 001 Unfortunately, although I had tried to free up my schedule, various client meetings and work engagements kept pulling me away from the two-day event, which was held at Ottawa University’s Tabaret Hall. However, I’ve posted some rough notes from Day 1 and Day 2. You can read more about the summit, and the CSS, here.

My overall impressions were very positive – I very much enjoyed the event, as I expected to. There were plenty of presenters, it was informative, a great source of networking, and the space community is small but enthusiastic. The main takeaway from everyone was how radically things are changing in the space industry.

Exciting times!

The post Canadian Space Society Annual Summit 2017 appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

What Is the Space Apps Ottawa / NASA International Space Apps Challenge?

NASA Space Apps Challenge Logo

Space Apps Ottawa 2017 was Ottawa’s inaugural participation in the NASA International Space Apps Challenge. This annual challenge is “an intense 48-hour global weekend hackathon for developers, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, astronomers and enthusiasts…Along with nearly 200 cities around the world, Ottawa teams formed teams and built prototypes against NASA-designed challenges that leverage spacecraft, celestial and science data.

“Developed by NASA and the European Space Agency, challenges focus on real-world design challenges, and on making our planet and universe accessible, visual, and fun to explore. The theme of this year’s event was “Earth” (Earth Science).” (Space Apps Ottawa website)

I suspect the theme choice was a political decision given the possibility that Earth science program funding might be discontinued by the current US government. Regardless of the reason, it provided a very consistent theme and was an opportunity for our participants to consider the importance and potential of space technologies and data to transform the quality of life on Earth.

In addition to the official NASA/ESA challenges, our own Canadian Space Agency released two Challenges for the Canadian Space Apps events. These challenges were related to Canada’s historic Alouette and the upcoming RCM constellation of earth-observing satellites.

A Global Community Effort

Our event was hosted at Shopify’s downtown Ottawa headquarters. Shopify was the perfect creative place for us to host, they even had a wonderful mural right at the doorway that couldn’t have fit better for our event! My thanks to Shopify rep Samantha and her team of volunteers, Sam Laura, and Matt, who were amazing to deal with and even gave up their weekend to ensure our event was supported and went well.

Shopify was one of many organizations, including the Canadian Space Society and my own company, Deploy Software Solutions, that provided logistical, marketing, and financial assistance to our fledgling event. Without such sponsorship we could never have held it.

We also benefited from great mentors and volunteers, who registered the participants, and helped them throughout the weekend, acting as sounding-boards and providing vital space-industry experience and skills to help the teams enhance their solutions and presentations. It was wonderful to see the mentors chatting with our participants, working through ideas using sticky notes on the wall, figuring out complex math formulas such as the position of the sun in the sky on different planets, or discussing ways to maximize the living spaces in future habitats.

Here are a few of them in action:

Thanks so much to Rey, Ewan, Kaizad, Hooman, Maykel, Cory, Sandeep, Chris, Wolf, Diana, and David for volunteering their time to provide mentoring, and on a weekend no less!

Although this was Ottawa’s first year hosting the event, Waterloo and Toronto have been hosting Space Apps challenges for at least a couple of years. We benefited enormously from the help of James Slifierz and James Costa, the respective organizers of those cities, as well as the NASA Global Lead team which provided materials and guidance we could use.

All weekend, we would tweet about our progress, and in return we’d see videos and tweets from organizers and participants all over the world. There were pictures of people in each different time zone, working hard, and always with big smiles (unless they happened to be caught napping – this was a 48-hour event after all).

The Participants and their Solutions

The Thinking Rickshaw

All of the sponsors, volunteers, and mentors helped make the event memorable and fun – but most of all credit goes to our participants who worked tirelessly and cheerfully all weekend to create their solutions. It was amazing how calm they all were – we would drop by to ask if they needed help and they rarely did – but we would overhear them talking about test runs at 2 am.

The solutions they produced in such a short amount of time were incredible: a prototype website consuming complex data sets from Canadian satellites; two machine learning solutions that could identify similar and dis-similar mosquito genomes or bird photos and place them on a map; a 3d design of space-conscious habitats; a user-friendly website explaining the impact of solar power consumption from common household appliances; and a roller-coaster satellites-eye view of the earth.

Judges Chad, Eva-Jane, and John

On Sunday we held judging, which is part of the NASA process to select promising solutions from across the globe.

Our three judges had extensive backgrounds in government funding for aerospace projects, venture capital and board membership, and banking and space-sector knowledge. They were able to ask about the feasibility of the various projects, and whether the teams foresaw opportunities to enhance their solutions.

Although it was their task to select only a few projects for global judging, they were surprised by how much all of the teams had accomplished in only 48 hours, and found it very difficult to make their selection from so many promising options.

After the weekend was over, there was still some work to do – for the organizers as we tied up some loose ends, and from Mission Control Space Services which contributed their time to help the selected teams with preparing a 30-second video showcasing their projects, to assist with the NASA and CSA selections. You can see their final video presentations here:

• Bird Watchers
• Team Ramrod
• Peri Peri

Congratulations to all of our Ottawa Teams!

Hackathon Lessons

Some of our participants have been to hackathons before, but the format was an eye-opener for most of us, myself included. We had lots of conversations about ways to leverage it to enhance Canada’s space sector, and even encourage the use of more hackathons in Canadian government organizations, and private companies.

It is amazing how much can be accomplished in such a short amount of time. Each team was able to self-organize, bond, collaborate, and present working prototype solutions to some very ambitious challenges. Each team had lots of ideas for future improvements, and also discovered some things that didn’t work.

In terms of standard software research and development time, this sort of focused effort is very “cheap” and can be repeated many times to explore and discard potential solutions in a creative and liberating way. Hackathons are becoming much more popular – in fact that weekend Shopify Ottawa was hosting another one simultaneous to ours, for people hacking on health care solutions for the local hospitals.

I was told about a good website listing major hackathons in North America, Major League Hacking, and next year we will submit ours to that.

Hard at work

Next Year: Space Apps Canada?

Overall, I feel like this year’s event was a great success, and am personally thrilled at how it turned out.

We are already speaking with many interested parties including the other two Canadian cities that participated, in the hopes of a creating a “Space Apps Canada” brand for future years. A national organization would increase the available support and awareness, and hopefully reduce the organizing burden for each city. We hope to widen the attendance, encourage other Canadian cities to participate, and include part-time participants and interested people via live-streaming.

Finally, my utmost thanks to Arthur and Ryan for their co-organizing efforts – planning this event was co-operative and never stressful, and it’s always a good sign when even the organizers are relaxed and enjoying themselves!

Organizers and Mentors

Onwards and upwards!

The post Space Apps Ottawa 2017 appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.

NASA Space Apps is:

“…an international hackathon that occurs over 48 hours in cities around the world. Citizens join together to share ideas and engage with open data to address real-world problems, on Earth and in space…They work alone or with a team to solve challenges that could help change the world.” (NASA Space Apps Challenge website)

We’ve already held our Bootcamp / Yuri’s Night evening, we have the support of so many great sponsors, we’re fully booked, and now we’re featured in the Ottawa Business Journal, “NASA’s International Space Apps Hackathon Touches Down in Ottawa“.

This year’s overall theme is “Earth” (meaning Earth Sciences), and the categories are:

• Ideate & Create!
• Our Ecological Neighbourhood
• Warning! Danger Ahead!
• Planetary Blues
• The Earth and Us

T-8 Days to launch.

#SpaceAppsOttawa

The post #SpaceAppsOttawa in the Ottawa Business Journal appeared first on Onwards and Upwards, by Nicholas Kellett.