Small but mighty, the Royal Military College of Canada's Space Science program along with the University of Toronto and corporate and government partners have launched a satellite that will change the way people travel the globe.
The 10-centimeter by 10-centimeter by 34-centimeter, 3.6-kilogram satellite is an automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast system named CanX-7, and it blasted into space on September 25 in India. Ron Vincent, associate professor and director of the Center for Space Research at RMC, said the project was more than seven years in the making and included the work of Maj. Richard Van Der Pryt and multiple RMC under-graduate and graduate students.
"We saw that this could have really important ramifications," Vincent said of the CanX-7, the first of its kind with scientific goals.
CanX-7 has two primary goals.
The first will be to track transoceanic flights when they enter the dark, uncontrolled air space over the north Atlantic. It will pass over the Gander and Shanwick Oceanic Control Areas three or four times a day, collecting data from between 50 to 200 aircraft each time.
Once an airplane is in the middle of the oceanic control areas, there is no automatic tracking system. The only time land knows a flight's location is when the pilot checks in manually. CanX-7 automatically receives a tracking signal six times a second.
"A lot of people don't understand that [flights] aren't being covered by radar when we're flying over the ocean or high Arctic," Vincent said. "That's what we're trying to demonstrate. We can't put a radar station in the middle of the ocean, there's just no way to do that, so all flights [currently] are based on position reports ... [CanX-7's] updates are even faster than radar, so it's a more accurate system."
This means no more flights would go missing even if a plane is taken down by severe weather or even captured by terrorists.
The other primary goal is to enable flights to be more efficient, ultimately saving money in fuel.
"We can have flights closer together during their flights over the ocean," Vincent said. "Right now we just keep them really far apart, they have an area and no other aircraft can be around them, So the routes are very efficient.
"If they can get closer together, less fuel is going to be expended and less greenhouse gases."
CanX-7 itself is environmentally friendly thanks to large drag sails that will help the satellite de-orbit after 15-20 years. This is in accordance with the Inter-Agency Space Debris Co-ordination Committee guidelines that recommend satellites leave earth's orbit within 25 years. Instead of staying in orbit and becoming dangerous space junk, satellites fall towards earth and burn up in its atmosphere.
"If something is still up there, the chances of running into something will increase more and more," Vincent said. "Some of the satellites that were launched in the 1960s are still up there."
Secondary missions of the CanX-7 will study the South Atlantic Anomaly. Vincent said that the area, which covers the south Atlantic Ocean and parts of South America and Africa, has more radiation due to a weakness in the first magnetic field that surrounds the planet. This may reduce the signals CanX-7 gets from aircraft.
"If you have a worldwide system, obviously we need to get signals from all over the world," Vincent said. "Our idea is to see if there any reduction in the signal strength when we go over that region."
They'll also be able to see how many aircraft they may miss in high-density areas such as over Toronto, London and New York.
"That's why we're just in the north Atlantic right now, so we can do an analysis," Vincent said. "After that we can look at a whole bunch of aircraft, see how many we're missing, and if we can develop algorithms to basically delineate for air traffic control."
The University of Toronto's Institute for Aerospace Studies' Space Flight Laboratory took care of getting the satellite to India's Satish Dhawan Space Centre launch pad in Sriharikota. From there, CanX-7 and seven other satellites hitched a ride on the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle at 9:12 a.m. (IST) on September 26—or late September 25 in Kingston.
"it was stressful because there is a lot that can go wrong. Just launching from a rocket—a rocket is essentially just a big firecracker," Vincent said of the launch and then waiting for feedback from CanX-7. "At the end of the day everything worked out. It's always exciting to think 'Wow, I have a satellite going into space.'"
Once the feedback came from CanX-7 and everything was functioning "healthy" there was a little celebration.
"Everyone's excited around the department," Vincent said. "It's a big deal—to us anyway."