Coastal mountains at Canada's northern tip possess many of the desirable properties that make the Antarctic glacial
plateau attractive for astronomy: they are cold, high, dry, and in continuous darkness for several months in winter.
Satellite images suggest that they should also benefit from clear skies for a fraction of time comparable to the best mid-latitude
sites, and conventional site-selection criteria point to good seeing. In order to confirm these conditions, we are
testing three mountain sites on northwestern Ellesmere Island, in Nunavut. On each we have installed a compact,
autonomous site-testing station consisting of a meteorological station, a simple optical/near-infrared camera for sensing
cloud cover, and - at one site - a more advanced all-sky viewing camera. The systems were deployed by helicopter and
run on batteries recharged by wind (a compact methanol fuel cell is under study as a supplementary power source).
Effective two-way communications via the Iridium satellite network allows a limited number of highly compressed
images to be transferred. The full-winter dataset is stored at the site on flash-drives, thus requiring a return visit to
retrieve, but day-to-day station performance can be assessed using telemetry and a computer model. Based on site-testing
results, the plan is to select one site for the addition of a seeing monitor and a small but scientifically productive
telescope.
Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are jointly working to place a microsatellite, equipped with a small optical telescope, on orbit to detect and track both "deep-space" earth orbiting objects (orbital altitudes > 5000 km), and inner-earth orbit (IEO) asteroids. The satellite will be named the Near Earth Orbit Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat), is baselined for launch in 4th Q 2008, and will be equipped with a 15cm diameter telescope capable of detecting 19.5th magnitude stars over a 100s integration. Other important design requirements of this telescope include the ability to observe to within 45 degrees of the sun (to better detect IEO asteroids) and the ability to observe to within 20 degrees of the anti-sun direction and remain power-positive. The mission is expected to cost $11M CDN (launch costs included, but operating and ground-station costs excluded). The scientific aims of the NEOSSat mission will be described and the results of the NEOSSat Phase-A will be presented. Test observations have been conducted using the MOST ("Microvariability and Oscillations of STars") microsatellite, the inspiration for NEOSSat, and the results of these observations will be shown here; these tests validate both the general concept of using a microsatellite for these types of observations, as well as the expected performance.
Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are collaborating to place a microsatellite in low earth orbit to perform optical detection and tracking of both inner-earth orbiting asteroids and earth-orbiting satellites and debris (i.e., "Resident Space Objects", RSOs). The "Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat)" will be the first mission for the CSA multi-mission microsatellite bus program, and is intended by DRDC to demonstrate the military utility of this small and inexpensive class of spacecraft. The mission will obtain metric positions, for geosynchronous satellites, to within ±500 m, timestamps accurate to within a millisecond, and be sensitive to objects in geosynchronous orbit down to 14th magnitude. The asteroid tracking mission will repeatedly survey the area from ±45-70° solar elongation with the aim of finding >50% of all inner-earth asteroids having diameters greater than 1 km.
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