Alexander MacDonald is NASA’s former chief economist and the author of The Long Space Age: The Economic Origins of Space Exploration from Colonial America to the Cold War.
When I think about the future of Canada these days, I am excited by the opportunity before us to think big and to catalyze a new era of Canadian ambition, innovation and growth. In response to unprecedented challenges, we are having national conversations about how our country is going to not only survive into the future, but thrive in it. After working at NASA for almost two decades, including as NASA’s first chief economist, I spend a lot of time thinking about the future, and the technologies we will need for future security and economic strength. As we enter a difficult but hopeful new era, and as we seek to build a stronger and more vibrant Canadian economy, we should make a bold and inspiring future for Canadians in space an integral part of our national vision.
In many respects, we are already on a path to such a future. Canadian companies are building one of the most advanced telecommunication satellite constellations in the world, appropriately named Telesat Lightspeed. Canadian innovators are developing the enabling technologies to allow for extensive and enduring operations on the moon – including through the potential use of Canadian nuclear-power technologies. Advanced constellations of satellites for applications ranging from greenhouse-gas monitoring, to wildland-fire detection, to in-space internet, are also being deployed and operated by Canadians. On Mars, a Canadian-built X-ray spectrometer has been analyzing rock and soil composition for scientists for more than 12 years.
And, thanks to significant federal investments in these areas and others, and to the dedication and expert negotiating skills of the civil servants of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), a Canadian will be the first non-American to ever leave Earth’s orbit and fly around the moon. When the Artemis II mission flies in the next year, and NASA astronauts return to the lunar vicinity for the first time since the Apollo Program ended in 1972, Colonel Jeremy Hansen, raised on a farm near Ailsa Craig, Ont., will be on board.
Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, who will fly to the moon as part of the Artemis II mission, speaks at LeBreton Flats in Ottawa, on July 1, 2023.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
And yet for all this, with the deep technical talent and potential that Canada possesses, we are still not even close to fully leveraging our space ambitions and capabilities. As a country, we currently provide the CSA around $350-million to execute the full suite of its programs, roughly $8.75 for every Canadian. Americans, by contrast, currently provide NASA with around US$25-billion, which is approximately US$73.50 for every American, equivalent to around $101.
This means that Americans spend over 10 times more on supporting their ambitious space scientists, space engineers and space entrepreneurs than we do. And that is not even counting the relative difference in our military and intelligence space programs, where increases are also very much needed. Advanced technologies and new high-growth companies will be needed to both maintain sovereignty and grow our economy in a world increasingly defined by technological competition. If we want a future where there are more jobs in these areas, more science and technology-focused internships for our children and grandchildren, and real opportunities for our best and brightest to stay in Canada, increasing our support for Canadian space ambitions would be an excellent way to secure them.
We also need to fully embrace and support the development of Canadian commercial space capabilities, and private-sector Canadian space ambitions, as a matter of policy and priority. The global space economy has been projected to more than double over the next decade – from US$630-billion in 2023 to US$1.8-trillion in 2035. If we want Canada to share this growth, we need to encourage Canadian space companies and entrepreneurs, particularly those with the largest ambitions.
But funding is far from the only issue. The CSA is one of the few space agencies in the world – and the only one in a comparably sized country – that has only a single centre for its activities – the CSA Headquarters just outside of Montreal. NASA has 10 centres spread out from coast-to-coast across America. The Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) has 11 centres. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has 45.
Space agencies around the world have multiple centres in order to ensure that the whole of their country benefits from, and can participate in, their national space activities. It is high time for Canada to adopt this global best practice and establish new CSA facilities, with at least one in Western Canada and one in Atlantic Canada. We also don’t need to add to the civil-servant head count to do this. We can follow the model of NASA’s legendary robotic space exploration centre – NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is operated by the California Institute of Technology – and have the majority of the staff be university employees. We need to be bold, innovative and prepared to try new things if we are going to succeed in seizing the opportunities available on the final frontier.
Recently, I returned to my hometown of Ottawa to speak at the first Canadian Space Launch Conference. There are now not one, but two different rocket-launch sites under development in Canada – in Nova Scotia and in Newfoundland – and there is another Canadian launch company planning to launch its rocket from Australia. Although the idea of sovereign Canadian space-launch capabilities might seem too advanced or too expensive, keep in mind that other countries that have their own sovereign launch capabilities include New Zealand, Iran and North Korea. Not only can Canada build our own orbital-launch capability, we need to. If we don’t, we will continue to be at the mercy of others. Much of the critical infrastructure of the 21st century is in space, and the need for resilient, end-to-end capabilities in orbit will only continue to grow.
It currently takes around US$100-million for a company to develop an independent orbital-launch capability. The Department of National Defence (DND) had expenditures of $33.5-billion in 2023-24. We have ample capacity to fund a Canadian launch capability, we just need to make it a priority. We need to maintain our strong partnerships with NASA and the American space industry more broadly, but if we develop Canadian sovereign-launch capabilities, we will have more to offer, including to our NATO and Five Eyes allies. We have the funds, technical capabilities, appropriate coastal geographies and the entrepreneurial initiative. We have but to decide whether we have the national will to own our future in the cosmos.
Space has been a key area of co-operation between Canada and the United States, but much could be at risk, particularly as NASA faces a historic budget cut of around 25 per cent and a proposed cancellation of the lunar Gateway project, in which Canada is a significant partner. In this environment, Canada must step up and become a leader in space like never before, building deeper partnerships with NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and others in the process. There has never been a better or more important time to increase our funding support for space capabilities in Canada, across civil, military and intelligence applications.
Leadership in space technologies, and the intellectual property and productivity improvements that arise from them, will be part of what defines the leading nations and economies of the future. If we want Canada to be amongst them, we need to prioritize investments in Canadian space capabilities and in Canadians with big space dreams. With glowing hearts, we need to choose to rise to the stars.