Tim Wilson ⚔️🇨🇦

Terra Nova, NordSpace’s first pathfinder satellite, is headed to orbit in a few weeks after successful build, test and integration between NordSpace’s SSL ahead of launch from Vandenberg SFB! Terra Nova represents far more than a satellite for NordSpace. It is the embodiment of our sovereign end-to-end space missions vision for Canada. It allows us to walk in the shoes of our future launch customers, unlock new business opportunities for scale and resilience, and build unified hardware, software and procedures with TRL-9 flight heritage that will power everything from our rockets to satellites. 🌎 Mission: This self-funded dual-use defence and commercial demonstration satellite will test capabilities ranging from Space Domain Awareness (SDA) to wildfire monitoring. Missions designed to protect Canadian sovereignty and save lives. 🛰️ Technology: Terra Nova will demonstrate four critical technologies we're developing in-house: our scalable Athena spacecraft bus, our Zephyr-EP electric propulsion thruster, our Chronos edge-AI camera system powered by an onboard NVIDIA GPU, and our Sentinel mission control software platform. Sentinel will power all missions at NordSpace including launch. The satellite was built and tested in our Space Systems Lab (SSL) including thermal, vacuum and vibration in-house. 🚀 End-to-End: While we're building Canada's first commercial orbital launch vehicles (Tundra and Tempest, light and medium-lift) and the Atlantic Spaceport Complex (ASX), Terra Nova demonstrates that we can deliver on every phase of the space mission lifecycle: design, manufacturing, launch, on-orbit operations, and data services. 🇨🇦 Canada: Seeing our inaugural satellite come together marks a pivotal and proud moment for NordSpace and Canada's space future. We are working to scale to larger and more capable buses including Athena+ and our new Aquila platform, and launch them on Canadian-made rockets from a Canadian-owned spaceport. That’s real sovereign launch. The most successful space launch companies, from SpaceX to Rocket Lab, understand that vertical integration isn't optional, it's critical. By operating our own hardware in orbit, launched from our rockets, using our own infrastructure, we develop a cost and control structure that is unmatched while building a company that is sovereign itself for a sovereign Canada. Building spacecraft in parallel with launch vehicles ensures we can support customers throughout the entire mission lifecycle while unlocking new business opportunities and accelerating our path to becoming a true end-to-end space missions company. The team photographed here and many others invested so much to get to this point, and we could not be more excited for NordSpace’s first mission going to orbit. We are just getting started. Ad astra, per aspera! 🛰️ 🇨🇦 @NationalDefence @DRDC_RDDC @csa_asc @spacecanada