Space threats, NORAD upgrade may spur new private defense spending in Canada

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is the entity that monitors the air and space around Canada and the continental United States for any threats. "It's become very clear to us and our allies, over the last little while, that this really needs to be a large team effort in terms of not just having defense capabilities, but certainly leveraging those of industry partners," said Brigadier-General G. Michael Adamson, commander of 3 Canadian Space Division, in the same livestream. The division is the equivalent of the U.S. Space Force and aims to more deeply integrate space activities into the Canadian Armed Forces, Adamson told Space. com late last year. "We want to make sure that we not only include Canadian industry, but hear how their space capabilities could help us with our future problems in the NORAD context," he continued. While the Canadian Space Agency is a civilian organization, it collaborates with the defense department using the Radarsat satellite series. As for satellite surveillance, Canada has a decade-old satellite in orbit called Sapphire, also made by MDA Space. As the first dedicated military space surveillance satellite for Canada, it passively records the light from objects in space up to and a bit beyond geosynchronous orbit, which is 22,236 miles above Earth.