McMaster students receive funding from the Canadian Space agency

A team of McMaster students who designed and built a tiny satellite, just received funding today from the Canadian Space Agency. Their project which will detect different types of radiation in space, could be launched to the International Space Station in the next three years.

Canada’s newest female astronaut, Jenni Sidey named 15 teams from across the country that are getting $200,000 to build a cube satellite for a launch in 2021. The team from McMaster is one of them, building a device called “Neudose”

“There are different radiation detectors that can discriminate between different types of radiation but our radiation instrument is the very first one that is going to behave like a human cell and also be able to tell what type of radiation the astronaut was exposed to.”

A team of 40 students from McMaster have been working on the satellite for three years. It’s about the size of a loaf of bread.

Before the Neudose device is sent up to the International Space Station it still needs to pass some rigorous testing this summer in Texas but team members are confident it will pass with flying colours.

Once in space, each time the satellite passes over Hamilton, it will beam down information to the researchers at McMaster.