Labrador site to help prevent space junk from hitting satellites

Labrador is set to become a monitoring site for tiny rocks and satellite debris orbiting the earth.

Defence scientist Lauchie Scott told CBC News space is increasingly cluttered as a result of work done by private companies and governments, increasing the risk of something hitting an object in orbit, which is what makes the project necessary.

"It's a very important thing to not have that happen," said Scott. "If you can imagine, like, an object basically the same weight as a loonie or a nut or a bolt, if it was to head-on collide with something in orbit, it actually has the same impact energy as a Ford F-150 truck on the highway."

When those crashes happen, it creates more debris, which can lead to more crashes, Scott said. There's hope though, that through tracking objects, people can avoid an expected crash.

A Winnipeg company has been awarded a $15.8-million contract for what's being called the Redwing space domain awareness microsatellite project. Magellan Aerospace will build and launch a microsatellite with Scott's Defence Research and Development Canada directing it. The government agency will be contracting sites in both Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Inuvik, N.W.T., to use as ground stations.

Scott said the microsatellites are basically "small space telescopes" that will track anything orbiting the earth by looking at its position and the sunlight reflecting off it to see its size and makeup.

Federal Defence Minister Anita Anand announced the project this month. Design is expected to be complete by fall 2024, while construction and testing is expected to take until 2026. The launch is planned for late 2026. 

Some satellites can actually do a small puff of gas to basically manoeuvre themselves out of the way.- Lauchie Scott

"Some satellites can actually do a small puff of gas to basically manoeuvre themselves out of the way of an oncoming object," Scott said. 

The movements have to be as accurate as possible because satellites have a finite amount of fuel, Scott said. To help the accuracy, monitoring sites needed to be in the north as the microsatellites orbit around the poles, Scott said. 

Inuvik and Happy Valley-Goose Bay are both northern, but Labrador's site is also eastern enough to reach the satellites early in their path, Scott said. 

"Basically when a satellite is passing over the middle of the Atlantic, we're able to start talking to it," Scott said.

While these microsatellites are going to be only a few hundred kilometres above the Earth, Scott said, another exciting element is that these space telescopes will be able to look further than what's orbiting our planet. 

"It does have the capacity to look out into deep space," Scott said. "Hopefully we're going to be able to have a chance to track the evolution of what's happening out in what we call lunar space. And that's something we're really looking forward to."

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