The Decibel - Ready to launch: Canada enters the space age

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

Despite Canada’s contributions to space technology and science, it lags behind other G7 nations in rocket launching capabilities. But that’s now changing – with federal investment and private business teaming up to eventually send spacecraft into orbit. It signals a growing political and economic interest in Canada. The Globe’s science reporter Ivan Semeniuk attended one of the recent launches in Nova Scotia. He’s on the show to explain the building up of spaceports, why the government is turning attention to space and how this fits into a larger idea of Canadian sovereignty. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

So last Wednesday, I found myself standing on a gravel lot, looking out over a kind of rocky peninsula with, you can imagine, kind of straggly stands of evergreen trees, very maritime, kind of northern maritime setting. Ivan Semenik is the Globe's science reporter. He's describing a gathering of about 100 people in Nova Scotia at a spaceport. That's right, think airport, but for space. Ivan was there to watch a rocket launch.

It's a far cry from, you know, Cape Canaveral or other places where thousands of rockets have been launched and there's kind of, you know, people are used to the routine. At the same time, it shares some of that same sense of anticipation. And, you know, a big event is about to happen. People start getting, you know, lining up, getting their cameras ready. We were about a kilometer or so away, maybe 1,200 meters away from the launch pad. and then you know you can start to hear the countdown over the intercom everyone's getting quiet

and then you see the spark of ignition and some of the smoke coming from the rocket this is a solid fuel rocket so you know again very quick and up it goes this went up like an arrow and was gone in a matter of seconds this test flight marks an important step in Canada's and for space. It was a demonstration launch, but also kind of coming out party for this idea of turning

Nova Scotia into a gateway to space. Something that seemed kind of far-fetched, maybe five years ago, but increasingly has been moving into reality and probably this past week seemed more real than ever. In this moment of focus on Canadian sovereignty, there's a growing interest in what that means for our extraterrestrial capabilities. So today, Ivan is on the show to tell us about this renewed investment in national launching capacity, what's going on at this Nova Scotia spaceport, and what it will take to launch Canada into a new space age. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Ivan, thanks so much for coming on the show.

My pleasure. So before we get into the details of this launch in Nova Scotia and how it fits into Canada's space ambitions, let's take a step back. Because you've been reporting on the world of science for a while now. Can you just remind us of Canada's accomplishments in space? Sure. Canada has a long and storied history in space. It goes right back to the 1960s. Canada, in fact, was the third nation to build a satellite to go into orbit.

That was the famous Alouette satellite. So after the United States and the Soviet Union, Canada had a satellite up in third place. And, of course, we've made many other contributions to aerospace. We have a thriving aerospace sector in Canada. probably were best known for the Canada arm on the space station. Of course, yes. And, you know, the previous version that was on the space shuttles. But, of course, for communications, for Earth observation,

Canada has a lot of hardware and space, a lot of people doing, working on that, whether it's on Canadian-built satellites or as components of other satellites and a lot of space research as well. So all of that has been going on for decades. What Canada has never had is its own domestic, launch capability to put its own satellites into orbit. Canada has had rocket launches, and we've had,

for example, for a few decades, there was a rocket research facility running near Churchill, Manitoba. These are rockets that would go up into the upper atmosphere. They wouldn't go into orbit. The last time a rocket launch from Canada went as high as qualifying to be considered to be in space, even just for a few moments, was. 1998. So not in this century has Canada reached the threshold of space, although that may soon change. So let's go to this launch site in Nova Scotia. Who runs it? What's going on there? The site is run by a company based in Halifax called Maritime Launch Services. It was founded by Steve Mateer, who's kind of an ex-NASA contractor, who also was involved in running a

spaceport in the American Southwest, who basically was looking all. across North America thinking if we were to build a new location, a new gateway to space, where could it be? He was looking all over the place. He settled on Nova Scotia. Partly he has some family connections there through his wife's side of the family. But he was really struck by this location near the town of Canso where you have this peninsula sticking out.

And the way it just offers such a long, clear shot kind of to the south. southeast down the kind of Atlantic corridor. You can send something on a very long trajectory without ever crossing any land. Okay. Can you explain this? Why that's important when it comes to launching things into space? From anywhere, anywhere where you're considering launching a rocket, it's ideal to launch out over water because that reduces the chance of it falling on somebody.

Pieces of debris are coming back down to Earth. But more importantly, if you can get this kind of high inclination, orbit, an orbit that's kind of mainly north-south, you can actually hit something called the sun-synchronous line. It's basically you can launch a satellite that kind of follows the line that divides day and night as Earth is spinning around, and that creates some interesting possibilities. For example, you can have a satellite in that orbit constantly illuminated. So, you know, unlike the space station, which kind of is constantly going in and out of Earth's shadow, in sun-synchronous orbit, you can actually have the sun-continiously shining.

on your solar panels. Okay, so that's important because you get more power here. They're definitely advantages to that. But the other thing is you can do interesting things like have a satellite passing over the same point on Earth at the same local time of day. And so if you're doing surveillance of different types

at different wavelengths, it's helpful to always be looking at the same time each day because then when you're kind of comparing more easily then you can if you're looking at all different times. Okay, so this makes sense and why Steve Mattyer chose this location. It seems like there's a lot of advantages there. And just to say that this is a commercial airspace company,

not a government-run facility, right? Yeah. How long has it been there for? So the idea, the company was founded in 2016, the idea has been around for a while. And the initial thought was to literally be a launch service that included the rocket. You know, bring your satellite here,

we'll provide the rocket and the launch pad and send it up. And in fact, they basically had teed up a Ukrainian company to provide the rockets. That plan went awry once the invasion of Ukraine started. So that was a big setback. And at that point, Maritime Launch pivoted to a different kind of approach, which is, you know, we'll have the spaceport. And all kinds of rocket makers, satellite makers,

anyone who's looking for access to space, we're giving them a launch site. So they've kind of moved in that direction. So far, they've kind of cleared the land, they've got access roads, they've got the launch pads. They don't yet have any permanent buildings. So it still has a kind of campy wilderness feel to it. You're just kind of out there. But with these temporary buildings kind of to accommodate.

But it's moving in the direction of establishing the spaceport. And, you know, the company has tried hard, although, you know, they face skepticism and concerns from some people in the community. They're also working hard to try to keep people on board. You know, there's an economic opportunity there, working with local governments, working with businesses, working with indigenous groups, and basically trying to, you know, say here,

we're here for the community. Is this the only launch site that we have in Canada? There's also a site in Newfoundland that the company Nord Space has used and have worked on test launches there or getting ready for launches there. It has some of the same advantages as well. This is more from the south coast of Newfoundland.

But the federal government has gone big on the Nova Scotia site and has invested money there and said that they want to have, you know, Ottawa wants to have its own launch pad there. We'll get into the government investment in a bit, but I do want to talk a bit more about this launch that you saw in Nova Scotia on June 10th.

What was the goal? So the company that did this launch, T-minus engineering is a Dutch company. It's building these rockets. You could call them sounding rockets. Again, they're not meant to go into orbit. They're just meant to go into the upper atmosphere, technically crossing the threshold of space. They're hypersonic rockets. So they're traveling really fast, more than five times faster than the speed of sound.

And the idea is to offer that for clients. There are people who are in aerospace who need to test. test components, do measurements, all sorts of possibilities. Even a short rocket flight like that gives you temporarily a microgravity environment. It also gives you an opportunity to see if your hardware will work at that hypersonic velocity. Basically, another commercial proposition. You need access to space, even briefly, to test your hardware. Here's a rocket that will do that for you.

So this company is designing, developing this rocket, and they are now doing these test launches from Nova Scotia. And so the test launch that you saw, was it considered successful? It's a good question. So I think that maritime launch services would say it was a success in the sense of how they integrated themselves with the company. The launch proceeded as planned. Everything was done well. They even had the flourish of, you know, Jeremy Hansen was a guest and got the honors of pushing the button that launched the rocket.

He was there. He was there. Yeah, absolutely. And very, very excited to see Canada moving in that direction as well, which was very upfront about. So it was a success in terms of moving forward towards, you know, how do we make this kind of more of a routine occurrence to do these launches? So all the pieces came together.

In terms of the rocket flight, it did not behave as planned. The initial part of the flight looked really good. but then you could sort of see towards the end the rocket went off in a different direction and that was also something that happened the first time back in November so the company is still trying to understand you know what's happening with the rocket kind of in the later stages of the flight

so that's yet to be determined there was going to be a second launch had this one gone flawlessly they might have launched another rocket that same day to get more data but instead they put a pause on the second launch Now it looks like maybe there won't be another launch until the fall. Okay. So we're talking about rockets here. Are there any satellites being launched from this location?

There was no special payload on this rocket. It's really just testing the vehicle at this point. At some point the rockets could carry payloads. This type of rocket is not able to send something into orbit. But the thinking is at some point, Spaceport Nova Scotia could house launches or could host launches that do in fact send satellites into orbit. Why is the goal to launch satellites?

Well, that's what gives you permanent access to space. You want to put a satellite in orbit, whether it's for communications, for Earth observation. I mean, we depend on satellites for everything. Just think of your cell phone and the GPS. That's true, yeah. We can't have modern life, as we know it today, without lots of satellites in space. So this site right now is kind of in testing mode, right? Can you explain when it comes to satellites, why is it so hard to get a satellite into orbit?

Is it hard? I'm assuming it is. It is hard. You need a certain amount of energy to reach that orbital velocity. I mean, this is something that goes back to Isaac Newton. What goes up must come down. And if you don't want it to come down, but instead start circling around the earth, you have to reach a certain velocity. You have to have a certain amount of energy to do that.

You know, a lot of things have to go right to have that kind of, it's essentially a controlled explosion that sends these rockets up into the atmosphere. The hard part is right towards the beginning when you're kind of going through the thickest, layers of the air, and then afterwards, you know, the air's thinning out, and then it's just a matter of then having all the mechanisms that deploy that satellite and then have it unfold and turn on and do all the things it's supposed to do. Is there a sense that this site is anywhere near to that yet? Well, I would say it still looks pretty far from, you know, what we're used to seeing, you know, obviously in a place like Cape Canaveral or, say, Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, other

places where, you know, we're used to seeing routine launches. It has a feeling of it's still just at the very early stages, still under construction, as I say, no permanent buildings yet. But it does have some of the same flavor of, you know, what a launch site should be. That sense of excitement and anticipation when you're waiting for this to happen was there. You know, right now there's this imperative for Canada to develop access so it can get to space. The question is, How urgent is that going to be? Will it be sustained over time? You know, and how long will it be before we see anything launched from Canada first reach space?

And then possibly a Canadian-built rocket reached space. And then finally, something from Canada launched from Canada reaching orbit. These are big milestones that are still in the future. We'll be right back. So this latest launch in Nova Scotia was a commercial launch. But the federal government has also shown interest in these space projects. How has the government been supporting developments in this area when it comes to legislation? So the government just in April introduced something called the Canada Space Launch Act.

Because as a recognition that legally, Canada doesn't quite have the framework to accommodate rockets going up into space, putting satellites into space, for example. So the new act, which has been tabled now and is going to work its way through Parliament, is meant to adjust existing rules around aeronautics to allow for launches on a regular basis. Until then, these are all case by case. Basically, maritime launch services need special permission to launch something every time they want to try it. So the thinking is to if you want to have a viable commercial launch sector and, Canada, you have to set up the rules that make that possible. And so that's what's still coming. Okay.

And the federal government's involvement goes beyond just legislation. They're also working and investing in maritime launch services. Can you tell me about that? So really in the past six months, the government has stepped into the idea of developing Canadian launch in a big way. They've committed over 300 million to this. 200 million has gone to maritime launch services for the idea. development of space port Nova Scotia.

Basically, the federal government has said they want to be a client as well. They want to have a dedicated launch pad. They want to be able to launch Canadian-made hardware in the public's interest into space from that site. So that has been committed. Another way that the federal government has committed to developing Canadian launch is to have this competition called Launch the North where different companies are essentially, receiving funding to try to develop launch vehicles or other hardware that would allow, you know, rockets to fly from Canada into space. So three companies are part of that now

and, you know, basically trying to hit the milestones that would allow them to access that funding as they go further along. This is certainly the most activity that Canada has ever had in the direction of developing its own access to space. Can you just explain more, who are these companies, and what does their work look like? Nordspace is one. Another is the Canada Rocket Company and then reaction dynamics. Two are based in Ontario. One is based in Quebec.

They're building rockets. They're building other hardware that enables launch, basically. All of these are still pretty small scale. This is not SpaceX, but even SpaceX had to start somewhere. So, you know, and one wonders if this imperative or if this urgent had been around 20 years ago where Canada would be at today, but only now is there a realization that perhaps as a country, Canada really needs to have this kind of capacity. So we're kind of starting from scratch.

So the big question then is, why is there so much renewed interests with the government in developing launching capabilities? Because you said this is kind of the most action we've seen ever, right? So what's going on? Well, you could argue that the economic case has always been a bit marginal. So for the longest time, launching things into space was really something that governments did, either civilian or military. That game changed with the arrival of SpaceX and other companies that really moved into the direction of commercial launch. You know, of course, there have always been commercial aerospace companies, satellite building companies and so on, but companies that can launch stuff into space.

You know, that was sort of the SpaceX revolution. So there are technical reasons for that, but also just that idea that, uh, For space economy to thrive, it had to move beyond just being under government umbrella. The question in Canada was always, is there enough of a market domestically for access to space? Probably not. So then Canada is going to have to compete on the global stage if it's going to have a launch service of some kind domestically. It's going to have to not just have Canadian customers, but customers from around the world. So that's where it was always tricky, you know, in terms of thinking, okay, what's the economic case?

But now you have this geopolitical. case where Canada, as a government, Canada, as a country is saying, wait a minute, it could be a problem if we need to put something in space and we can't get anyone else to do it for us, or to prioritize and put our hardware in space when we need it there. So this is now seen as a strategic issue. So now you have the federal government pushing for it in a way that we have never seen before. Can you spell out why space is part of the government's defense strategy? because they have put some funding into this through defense spending, right? So, yeah, what's going on there?

I think there are some obvious reasons why Canada would want to have that access. It is a huge, huge country, sparsely populated, especially in the Arctic. There's really no practical way to imagine having kind of having a grip on, you know, what's happening in your territory without being able to. see it from space, to access it from space, at various wavelengths, radar, infrared, optical, day and night, and also to, from an economic development point of view, to get the most out of your resources,

to understand what's happening with your agriculture, to get a handle on climate change and what it's doing to different parts of the country. These are things that would be almost impossible to do from the ground. On top of that, you need to be able to have communication and facilitate the flow of information so that a modern economy and a modern country can run. Again, almost impossible to imagine doing that

in a place as big as Canada without access to space. So for all of those reasons. And then if you imagine that being compromised by an outside actor or being reliant on another country for all of that, that starts to seem like, oh, we need to do something. Okay. So it sounds like we're talking about sovereignty

and sovereignty in space now. Yes, absolutely. That's become a bigger issue. Not just for Canada, but for other NATO countries as well. NATO has a program called Star Lift. It started in 2024. Now, just in the past few months,

Canada has said it wants to be a member of Starlift, which is basically a way of developing a broader network of launch sites or ways of accessing space. I think NATO countries, countries in Europe, in particular, are recognizing that they also have vulnerability if they're trying to get things into space and they can't for whatever reason, you know, perhaps in the middle of conflict or something else going on. But both during peacetime and wartime, they're recognizing they need access to space and they need kind of backup and contingencies. And if something goes wrong and this launch site is no longer capable, you know, is there a backup launch site?

Space is becoming more important than ever in terms of what's needed for strategic reasons. So this is why countries like Canada now have to take this more seriously. So with all of this work being done to develop our space launching capabilities, what do the next steps look like for Canada? Like what are the goals here? The goal is to simply have access to space, to have something that can get you, up there. So, you know, we have the beginnings of a launch site. And, you know, we have companies that are beginning to develop the technology as well. So I think the question is just how fast can this happen and what will it take to, you know, to advance this technology domestically?

I think that's actually where, you know, it matters that Jeremy Hanson was there last week. And by the way, in addition to that, a busload of NATO representatives were there also to watch. So everyone is interested. I think it matters because also if Canada is going to do this, it means that there will need to be interested, young people entering the sector, you know, engineers and other experts who can develop the expertise to advance this technology on Canada's behalf, have to be interested and excited in doing it. Space traditionally has that sense of flare or excitement to it. It's always been a kind of a point of national pride whenever a country achieves something in space,

you know, right up into landing people on the moon. But also, you know, we saw Jeremy Hanson flying around the moon. That was very exciting for Canada. But other kinds of achievements in space as well are also, you know, have also been seen as very important kind of international way. And it inspires people and inspires young people. in careers in engineering and science and so on. Also, this being visible matters too, psychologically. And I think the idea is, you know, will this achieve the momentum that you need for people to be in the

field, for people to be working on this technology, and then be supported so that this can go somewhere. Yeah. So what you're describing here, it's not just about geopolitics or economics. It's also kind of about the emotional side of it. Absolutely. So we can call that. sovereignty, if Canada is a country, does it do the things that countries do? You know, and that could be something like, does it have the capacity to make vaccines during a pandemic, for example? And there are other things like that that Canada has realized, oh, these are things that we've handed off to other countries. Perhaps that's not appropriate if we're considering ourselves as truly sovereign. So maybe access to space is one

of those things that we have to do to be a serious country in the world. Not every country does that, but again, Canada is the only G7 country that does not have its own launch capability in some way. So, you know, that's an important distinction. Ivan, thank you so much for coming on the show. My pleasure. Up, up, up and away. That was Ivan Seminick, the Globe's Science Reporter. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. This episode was produced by our associate producer, and academic intern, Cynthia Jimenez. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Mahal Stein.

Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.