Crisis Ensures NRC's 100th Birthday Will Be Memorable

The entrance to the historic Plaskett Telescope at the NRC's Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. Chris Gainor photo.

The National Research Council of Canada will turn 100 on June 6.

Established during World War I, the NRC started off enlisting Canada's researchers in the war effort, but soon the emphasis changed to a mixture of pure scientific research and dealing with various social and economic challenges faced by Canadians.

Over the years, NRC researchers have made important contributions to a whole variety of scientific pursuits, including medicine, nuclear physics, astronomy, aviation, agriculture and engineering, to name just a few. NRC scientists have made important scientific discoveries, and created a number of devices and processes that make our lives better and our economy stronger.

The NRC was the home of much of Canada's space program until the Canadian Space Agency commenced operations in 1989.

Today the NRC has more than 4,000 employees in 50 research facilities in every part of Canada. Of special interest to me are NRC's astronomical facilities, which are grouped in Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics. These facilities include the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO), just down the road from my home in Victoria, B.C.

It is well known that the past decade under Stephen Harper's Conservatives was not a good one for science in Canada. All scientists in federal employ were muzzled. At NRC, tight money was the order of the day, along with an emphasis on directing research to immediate, short term gains for Canadian business.

In 2010, the Harper government appointed John McDougall as president of NRC. McDougall had previously headed the Alberta Research Council, where he had implemented a similar emphasis on applied research.

Morale fell at NRC during the Harper years. But most of the problems at NRC did not get public attention. One exception was the NRC's decision in 2013 to close down the Centre of the Universe public outreach centre at the DAO, which I have written about in some detail in this blog.

Since the new Liberal government of Justin Trudeau took office last fall after winning the October federal election, many initiatives of the Harper government have been overturned, one of the first being the gag order affecting federal scientists. But what about the NRC?

As reported this week by Tom Spears of the Ottawa Citizen, McDougall went on a personal leave in March for an indefinite period of time.

Last week, the new acting president of NRC, Maria Aubrey, announced that a major reorganization of NRC that was slated to take effect April 1 has been postponed indefinitely. Aubrey's announcement made it clear that the postponement is necessary to bring NRC into line with the new government's priorities.

Beyond these two short announcements, the government's plans for NRC are shrouded in secrecy. The two cabinet members responsible for NRC, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Science Minister Kirsty Duncan, aren't answering reporters' questions.

We can hope that the shape of the Trudeau government's plans for the NRC will emerge soon, and that those plans will restore the strengths of the NRC.

Canada has benefitted greatly from NRC's applied research work. But this important work must also be balanced with basic research that answers fundamental questions of science and leads us to those coveted advances in applied science. It's time to restore balance - and financial support - to NRC. If that happens, NRC can move forward into a second century that builds on the achievements of its first century.

The Summer Victoria Had a Launch Pad

The Ocean Odyssey at the Esquimalt Graving Dock, June 2007. Ken Walker photo via Wikimedia.

One of the notable characteristics of Canada’s space program is that it doesn’t have launch capability. Canada has developed the Black Brant sounding rocket, but Canada has no rocket capable of putting anything into orbit, nor has any satellite ever been orbited from Canadian soil.

Despite periodic calls from people inside Canada’s space industry for a Canadian orbital launch capability, including a proposal I wrote about in April 2014 in this space, it remains a distant prospect. 

But I was recently reminded of a time when a launch pad was temporarily located just a few kilometres from my home in Victoria BC on Vancouver Island. This was one of the more unusual chapters in Victoria’s marine and space history.

The story begins in 1995 when a consortium of companies from four countries - Russia, Ukraine, Norway and the United States - created Sea Launch, a partnership with the goal of launching Ukrainian-Russian Zenit rockets from a converted oil platform located on the Equator in the Pacific Ocean. The rockets were designed to launch communications satellites into geostationary orbits, and an equatorial location is the most efficient place to launch these satellites. 

Sea Launch used a specially-built ship, the Sea Launch Commander, based in Long Beach, California, where each rocket was assembled and mated with its payload. Then the rocket was transferred to the self-propelled platform Ocean Odyssey, from which it was launched. Starting in 1999, Sea Launch launched 29 rockets this way, with 26 successes, two failures, and one partial success. 

A major failure took place on January 30, 2007, when the Zenit rocket exploded on the pad just after ignition. Repairs were needed to the launch platform, and so the Ocean Odyssey was brought to the Esquimalt Graving Dock at Victoria Shipyards in June and July 2007 for this work. The repair job, which according to a Victoria Times Colonist article involved fixing hangar doors on the platform and many of the wires and light fixtures that were damaged in the explosion. About 30 tonnes of paint would be used, and the cost of the job was estimated at about $30 million.

After the Ocean Odyssey was repaired, it departed the Victoria area without any fanfare and then returned to service with the launch of a satellite in January 2008. Sea Launch continued to launch rockets and satellites until 2014, when the political problems resulting from the Russian seizure of Ukrainian territory that year caused Sea Launch to halt operations.

The graving dock is located at Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt, the home of the Pacific Fleet of the Royal Canadian Navy. The history of the base goes back to 1848, when ships from the Royal Navy first came to Esquimalt, which is a suburb of Victoria. The first graving dock was built on the base in 1887, and moved to Canadian control in 1905. Another  larger graving dock was built  nearby in the 1920s and is now used by Victoria Shipyards under an arrangement with Public Works and Government Services Canada. 

The Esquimalt Graving Dock has been used by Victoria Shipyards to build and repair many navy ships, ferries, ocean liners and other craft, but only once has it been used to repair a launching pad.

Thanks to archivist Sherri Robinson of the Township of Esquimalt for her help with this article.

Ocean Odyssey on station with a Zenit Rocket. Sea Launch image

Trudeau Government Fails First Big Space Test

For the two final months of 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new Liberal government was able to bask in the glow most Canadians felt from removing the government of Stephen Harper and from necessary but easy actions such as unmuzzling government scientists and re-instituting the long form census. 

Now 2016 is here, and along with it comes more difficult decisions. The first full week of the new year saw the Trudeau government permit a $15 billion deal to sell armoured troop carriers to the government of Saudi Arabia despite ample evidence of that government’s brutality. 

Last week, the Trudeau government also declined to review the $455 million sale of Cambridge Ontario, satellite equipment maker Com Dev International to the American firm Honeywell International Inc. Com Dev structured the deal to stay under the $600 million threshold for automatic review of the deal under the Investment Canada Act, and the 45-day period in which the government could choose to review the Com Dev deal expired a week ago.

Com Dev is one of the great economic success stories of Canada’s space program, making specialized equipment that operates in nearly a thousand different satellites and space probes from various countries. Canadian taxpayers have invested large amounts of money in Com Dev and other firms to create high tech, export-oriented jobs. 

The deal must be approved by Com Dev stockholders in a vote on January 21. Com Dev investors stand to benefit from this deal, but but what about the investments made by Canadian taxpayers in Com Dev? The ultimate cost of this deal to Canada may well be in the Canadian jobs created under the Com Dev banner. Ironically, job creation is the big reason given for going ahead with the Saudi arms deal.

This decision contrasts with a different decision made by the Harper government in 2008 when MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. wanted to sell its space division to an American firm for $1.3 billion. In that case, the Harper government made the difficult but correct decision to block the sale. 

That decision turned out be be not only right for Canada but right for MDA. The company had decided to get out of the space business and stake its future on a property registry system that just a few months later began to suffer greatly when U.S. housing took a nosedive at the start of the great recession.

Unfortunately, the space side of MDA's business has not grown as much as it might because the Harper government has been cutting Canada's space spending, which hits the order books of MDA and other firms such as Com Dev.

The Trudeau government’s decision to allow the Com Dev sale is consistent with the federal Liberal tradition of being friendly to the wishes of business, particularly foreign business. 

The loss of Com Dev could herald the decline of Canada’s space sector. The new government's decision to permit the Com Dev sale may stem from a reluctance to restore the cuts the Harper government made to space spending.

 

In the federal election campaign, Justin Trudeau and his Liberals promised “real change.” In the field of space, that change has been a negative one so far. 

New Government, New Ministers, New Prominence, But The Return of Old Problems

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen at climate change event, November 23, 2015. CSA photo.

A few weeks have now passed since the 2015 federal election, and the new Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is taking form with a new cabinet and actions to bring its electoral promises to fruition.

Almost every day the new government does something that sets it apart from the ousted Conservative government of Stephen Harper. As I was writing this post, Trudeau met with the provincial premiers, something Harper had refused to do for nearly seven years, and more remarkably, the topic was climate change.

As part of the meeting, the first ministers heard from scientists about climate change, and that part of the meeting was moderated by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. The event marked the unmuzzling of scientists working on climate change after the Harper years, and new prominence for our astronauts, for Harper was not known to mix with astronauts except when necessary.

When the new government took office on November 4, the old Industry Ministry was replaced with a Ministry of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, with Mississauga-Malton MP Navdeep Singh Bains as minister. In addition, Trudeau named Etobicoke North MP Kirsty Duncan as Minister of Science, and assigned her to work as part of a team led by Bains.

And Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut and a former president of the Canadian Space Agency, also sits at the Trudeau cabinet table as Minister of Transportation.

Since the Liberals refrained from making specific promises relating to Canada’s space program and space industry, space was not a part of the mandate letters given to Ministers Bains and Duncan, and so it remains to be seen what the new government will do about space.

Astronaut Jeremy Hansen with Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains and Science Minister Kirsty Duncan. CSA photo.

Some clues to future directions did emerge last week in the form of speeches by Minister Bains and Sylvain Laporte, the President of the Canadian Space Agency.

Bains, whose riding includes Pearson International Airport and the many aviation contractors that surround it, told the 2015 Canadian Aerospace Summit in Ottawa on November 18 that he has spoken with David Emerson, the former Liberal and Conservative minister who authored the 2012 review of Canada’s aerospace and space policies. This suggests that the Emerson report will inform the new government's future actions.

The next day, CSA President Laporte appeared at the 2015 Canadian Space Summit in Vancouver and gave his first address to a Canadian audience since his appointment in March by the Harper government. Laporte had just met ministers Bains and Duncan for the first time a few days earlier, and so there was little he had to announce. 

Many in the audience at the space summit, which was organized by the Canadian Space Society, hope the Liberals will reverse the tight-money policies of the Harper government that have caused distress to Canada’s space contractors, and a lack of opportunity at home for qualified engineers and scientists, especially those just graduated. So when Laporte was asked about the possibility of new money for the CSA, he replied that he has no news on that front but said he hopes for “constructive discussions” with the new ministers.

Laporte, who has worked within the Canadian government through his career, admitted that he does not have a background in space but aimed to demonstrate in his talk that he is working hard to catch up. He added that he is determined to fulfill his five-year mandate at the CSA.

Given that Innovation is a word that now appears in the name of the ministry that includes the CSA and was also used a great deal in Ottawa under the previous government, Laporte’s speech was also peppered with the word. 

That innovation agenda now faces a challenge. Canada’s second largest space contractor and one whose innovations have found their way into most spacecraft flying today, Com Dev International of Cambridge, Ontario, announced the day  after the Trudeau government took office that it is being sold to the American contractor, Honeywell International Inc.

Although the deal is structured to avoid a review by the federal government, such a review should be considered because of the important role Com Dev plays in Canada’s space industry.

The Com Dev deal recalls the attempted sale of Canada’s largest space contractor, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., to an American contractor in 2008. Faced with concerns about the security implications of the sale, the Harper government wisely blocked the transaction. 

The new Trudeau government will have to consider the fate of both Com Dev and MDA, and soon, given that federal budget cuts to the CSA have adversely affected the two firms and other Canadian space contractors.

Positive feelings envelop the new government today, but the clock is already running on difficult decisions that must be made on the future of Canada’s space industry. 

CSA President Sylvain Laporte addresses the 2015 Canadian Space Summit. Alma Iridia Barranco image via Twitter.

Canada's Space Program, the Election and the New Federal Government

Marc Garneau, the Liberal MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount.

The federal election just concluded on October 19 will be remembered for its result and its length, and by some people for the fact that space emerged as a minor issue.

In its fifty-seven years or so of existence, Canada’s space program has rarely been a matter of controversy, let alone an election issue. And when the 2015 election campaign began on August 2, there was little to indicate that this would change. Maclean’s, Canada’s self-styled national magazine, published a special Space Issue a month into the campaign, and the only mentions of Canada’s space program came in "where-are-they-now" interviews with our astronauts.

But New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair got the space policy ball rolling in the campaign on September 8 when he formally promised $40 million over four years for the Canadian Space Agency’s technology development program as part of his National Aerospace Plan. More recently, the NDP put out a humorous internet meme promoting its space promise.

On September 12, the Canadian Press  quoted a prominent Liberal and a leading New Democrat promising that the CSA would finally get a long-promised and long-delayed long-term plan, and more funds to carry out that plan should their parties form government. 

New Democrat Peggy Nash and Liberal Marc Garneau, who is also Canada’s first astronaut, responded positively to the Canadian Space Commerce Association’s call for the long-term space plan, with Nash pointing to Mulcair’s promise and Garneau suggesting but not promising that a Liberal government would provide more funds. The Conservatives did not respond to the call for a long-term plan.

On October 12, the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) in Canada issued a press release calling for the CSA’s budget to be stabilized, not only in terms of dollars but in terms of buying power. The CSA’s base budget was set at about $300 million in 1999, and it has stayed near that figure since then, despite the major fall in its real value due to inflation and currency fluctuations. SEDS Canada, which represents 11 groups around the country, warned that continued reductions to CSA’s budget threaten Canada’s $3.5 billion space industry and the livelihoods of 8,200 Canadians in highly specialized and highly paid jobs.

Canada’s space budget is a fraction of the U.S. space budget, even on a per capita basis. There are a number of individual hospitals in Canada that have bigger budgets than the CSA. But even when looked at purely as an economic driver and a generator of high technology exports, our space program is one of the best investments Canadian taxpayers make.

But the calls from the students and space advocacy groups, coupled with meagre order books at Canadian space contractors, signify that more help is needed for the space sector than the $40 million promised by the NDP.

This election turned on much larger issues than the CSA. Canadians basically decided that it was time to remove a Conservative government that, amongst other things, muzzled scientists, twisted democratic institutions to its own ends, threatened the rights of minorities for political reasons, and proved to be a poor manager of the economy.

The record of Stephen Harper’s government in space had some good points, notably the decision in 2008 to block Canadian space contractor MDA’s sale to an American competitor. But the CSA suffered from policy neglect and financial cutbacks as the Harper government searched for money for its narrow political priorities. Harper named Gen. Walter Natynczyk, the retired head of Canada’s defence staff, to bring some heft to the top job at CSA, but 15 months later, Natynczyk was moved out of CSA to help the government deal with the consequences of its poor treatment of veterans.

Sylvain Laporte, the longtime civil servant appointed as CSA president by Harper in March, is slated to make his first major speech at the Canadian Space Summit in Vancouver on November 19. 

Now there will be a new Liberal majority government in Ottawa. While the Liberals have made no clear commitments to Canada’s space program, it will have a powerful advocate at the cabinet table. Marc Garneau, who served as president of the CSA between his times as an astronaut and as a politician, probably won’t have direct responsibility for space, but as one of the senior members of Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, he will be in a strong position to bring positive change to Canada’s space program.

If Garneau succeeds as an advocate for the space program, he will bring an end to years of neglect at the hands of both the Harper Conservatives and the Chretien-Martin Liberal government that preceded it. It appears that the agency will need more attention and more new money than any party promised in the election campaign. Justin Trudeau has promised real change, but in space as on Earth we must wait to see if his actions in government live up to that promise.

The NDP's humorous internet meme from the recent campaign.

New Group Helps Create a Future for the Centre of the Universe

Members of the public enjoy viewing the sky and some popcorn on the side at the DAO's last public observing night for 2015 on September 12. Chris Gainor photo

The lunar eclipse last weekend saw thousands of people around Victoria get out to places like Mount Tolmie, Esquimalt Lagoon, Cattle Point, and other sites with eastern views to see this glorious phenomenon of nature. 

There was another gathering that evening at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory on Little Saanich Mountain that marked a step forward for the new organization that is working to revitalize the DAO’s Centre of the Universe visitors and educational centre.

Two years ago, the federal government withdrew operating funding for the Centre of the Universe, a decision that drew strong community opposition both inside Greater Victoria, where I live, and elsewhere in Canada. 

Last summer and this, volunteers from the Victoria Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada held star parties on Saturday nights at the DAO. Visitors on those evenings enjoyed observing through RASC members’ telescopes, tours of the historic Plaskett Telescope, and this year, speakers and exhibits at the Centre of the Universe. During both summers, youngsters enjoyed educational programs put on at the Centre by the University of Victoria’s Science Venture program.

But this setup was only a temporary solution. From the beginning of the effort to save the Centre, it was acknowledged that an organization to coordinate programming there was needed. This summer, the Friends of the DAO Society was incorporated and its board established, including chair Ben Dorman, an IT professional and astronomer, and Don Moffat, who spearheaded the initial effort to save the CU two years ago.

Now the new organization is going to work. It has set up a website http://observatoryhill.org, has begun to appeal for members and contributions, and on eclipse night it held its first event for members at the DAO. More than 120 people of all ages showed up to watch the eclipse and enjoy some hot chocolate and eclipse cookies.

But its aim is to keep the observatory open to the general public. and there are challenges ahead. The dozen Saturday nights the DAO was open to the public this past summer were overwhelmingly popular - hundreds of people came out to each of those evenings, and many were turned away at the bottom of the hill because there was no more capacity on top. As one of the RASC volunteers this summer, I could see just how popular the observing nights are.

The Friends of the DAO is working to increase public access to the DAO in summers to come. Right now it hopes to raise $9,500 to restore school tours to the DAO and improve the educational equipment available at the Centre of the Universe. Once this goal is achieved, the Friends hopes to expand programming at the Centre, keeping in mind that the 100th birthday of the Plaskett Telescope is coming up in 2018.

Please consider joining the Friends and contributing to its crowdfunding campaign. And keep an eye out for new events from this exciting new venture.

Al Gore's Great Idea Produces Memorable Images

A DSCOVR image of the Earth and the far side of the Moon taken on July 16. 2015. Note Mexico and the United States on the Earth. NASA Image

Simply because this was the season where we finally saw close-up photos of Pluto and its moons, the summer of 2015 has been a memorable one for space exploration. And that’s even before considering  Dawn’s close-up shots from the largest body in the asteroid belt, Ceres, and more photos from Rosetta as Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko made its closest approach to the Sun.

But those images have been upstaged in my mind by images from a spacecraft that was launched on February 11 to little fanfare. Today the Deep Space Climate Observatory or DSCOVR is parked in space a million miles away from Earth at the L1 Lagrangian point where the gravity of the Earth and Sun balance the centrifugal forces of the satellite. A number of spacecraft at L1 are gathering data on the Sun, but DSCOVR is taking advantage of the fact that from this point, spacecraft always see the sunlit side of the Earth. 

On July 16, DSCOVR shot a sequence of photos of the Moon passing in front of the Earth. The side of the Moon visible in these photos is the far side, often erroneously called the dark side. The Moon’s rotation rate means that we always see one side of the Moon from Earth, but the other side can only be seen from space. While earlier space probes have shot images of the Earth and the Moon together, none have matched the quality or the perspective of DSCOVR’s photo sequence. 

That photo sequence, which was released on August 5, is only the second photo release from DSCOVR. The first colour image of the whole Earth taken from DSCOVR was released on July 20 to great fanfare, in part because it reminded many people of the famous “Blue Marble” photo of Earth taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. 

Once the Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) on DSCOVR is in full operation in September, images of Earth will be posted daily on a dedicated web page. As well, EPIC and other instruments will provide information on changes in Earth’s atmosphere, including the levels of ozone and aerosols. 

The concept of regular photos of Earth from this vantage point did not originate with a scientist, but from Al Gore, who was vice president of the United States in 1998 when he first came up with the idea that was soon turned into a spacecraft called Triana. The idea faced withering political ridicule from Gore’s Republican opponents, and the administration of George Bush, the man who defeated Gore in highly controversial fashion in the 2000 presidential election, put Triana into storage in 2001 instead of launching it.

In 2012, incidently when the Democrats were back in office under Barack Obama, Triana was taken out of storage, taken apart, reassembled, renamed DSCOVR and prepared for its launch earlier this year. Not surprisingly, Al Gore was amongst those who watched the launch from Cape Canaveral.

DSCOVR is a joint project of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it is being controlled from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

As it was always designed to do, DSCOVR will be also keeping close watch on the Sun, and providing advance warning of particles emitted from the Sun that could affect communications and electrical infrastructure on Earth. We know that solar storms can affect life on Earth - as a resident of Montreal in 1989, I lived through a major power failure that originated with a solar storm - so DSCOVR will be an important part of our space infrastructure.

DSCOVR is four times as far away from the Earth as the Moon, so the Earth and Moon are very close to real scale in its images. And seeing the Moon pass in front of the Earth from that altitude drives home how close the Moon is to our home planet, at least compared to other celestial bodies. 

Other observers have noted that the Moon is quite dark compared to Earth. Although the Moon looks very bright in our night sky, it actually reflects only about eight percent of the sunlight that falls on it. It is a celestial lump of coal. 

When the EPIC camera begins full operations in September, I expect that its web page will become a very popular place. We may even see its images become a regular part of television weather forecasts, and I expect to see more photo sequences from DSCOVR showing the rotation of our Earth and changing weather patterns. Thanks, Al Gore!