Space Strategy for Canada
Delivering the Vision – Canada's Space Strategy (continued)
3 Harness space to solve everyday
challenges for Canadians (continued)
- Improving remote medicine and health care: By leveraging Canada's health and medical research expertise, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, Canada will advance autonomous medical systems to support astronaut health in space and health outcomes at home. Through the Lunar Gateway project and via new efforts on Earth, Canada will explore questions key to improving health care and quality of life for Canadians. Keeping astronauts healthy in deep space has many direct applications in health care today, especially for remote communities: monitoring vital signs, preventing illnesses, performing diagnostics and delivering medical care over great distances. Canada will work with health partners and northern communities to make sure that the advanced knowledge and technologies gained from the space program translate into concrete benefits for all Canadians.
- Enhancing access to nutritious food: Growing nutritious food effectively in remote regions with harsh environments could allow us to mature the technology to do the same on the Moon and in deep space. The Government will work with provincial and territorial partners to explore how to help improve the accessibility of food across Canada, including the North, with the aim of, one day, taking these lessons learned to help astronauts grow food off Earth.
- Supporting future secure communications: In , the Government provided up to $80.9 million to the CSA to support new projects that utilize disruptive Canadian innovations in space, including the Quantum Encryption and Science Satellite (QEYSSat) mission. This mission supports the demonstration of emerging Canadian capabilities in the area of quantum key distribution, which has the potential to support more secure communications through unbreakable encryption codes.
Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS)
IDEaS was announced in Strong, Secure, Engaged and will support the development of solutions to some of Canada's toughest defence and security challenges. IDEaS offers support for innovations from their conceptual stage, through prototype testing and capability development. The program will foster a competitive environment by challenging stakeholders from a variety of domains, including space, to develop innovative science and technology solutions to these challenges. For example, the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) is seeking to develop a common operating picture of space assets, a need driven by today's highly competitive space operations environment. New space-based technologies will enable DND/CAF to maintain space situational awareness for informed, expedited decision making in support of space system operations.