Canada Is Building a Surveillance Network in Space

Deep in the forests of Algonquin Provincial Park, a few hours north of Toronto, sits a metal monster. Like the iron giant of British poet Ted Hughes’s fable, it, too, has come back to life, reassembled. Hughes’s creation saves the planet. What’s this one’s mission?

Our iron giant is a deep space radio telescope, with an antenna dish measuring forty-six metres across, the largest instrument of its kind in Canada. Starting in the 1960s, the Algonquin Radio Observatory performed a number of cutting-edge scientific projects, including joining SETI’s early efforts, in the 1970s and 1980s, to find signatures of alien life—spectrum emissions from water molecules, artificial transmitter signals. No luck.

Then the ARO fell on hard times—budget cutbacks, advances in telescope technology, aged and failing equipment. Canada’s iron giant was mothballed by its operator, the National Research Council, in 1987. There it sat, silent, rusting, for two decades.

The radio telescope was leased to a scientist and entrepreneur, Brendan Quine, in 2007. Quine had come to Canada after his PhD at Oxford and helped establish a space engineering program at Toronto’s York University. To pursue more experimental and commercially ambitious projects, he co-founded Thoth Technology in 2001 and later spun off an affiliate, ThothX.

Thoth, Quine reminded me, was an Egyptian deity of wisdom. X? Elon Musk, of course. Musk has built his rocket enterprise, Space X, and his social media company, ex-Twitter, now X, into world-leading enterprises. Quine has similar ambitions—what he half-jokingly calls his “world domination plan.”

But first he had to resurrect the iron giant. He fixed the broken windows of the control station, installed new electronics, and secured the perimeter against bears. Then he had to give the instrument a new purpose. What Quine ultimately hit on speaks to our threatened times, severe geopolitical tensions, and our accelerating dependence on space platforms for critical services, including telecommunications and navigation.

Using ARO, ThothX can detect one-metre-long objects in orbit at a distance of 100,000 kilometres—about a quarter of the way to the moon. And it can do it in any weather, day or night, at a fraction of the cost of traditional systems. In military nomenclature, the objective is “space domain awareness.” SDA goes beyond tracking satellites; it’s the work of figuring out what’s out there, what it’s for, and whether it poses a threat. The threats are many: space debris, potential collisions between satellites, or deliberate attacks by hostile nations. As long ago as 2011, the Pentagon and the United States director of national intelligence laid down a warning. “Space,” they said, “is becoming increasingly congested, contested and competitive.” Fifteen years later, the alarm has grown.

To understand why, it helps to remember that the heavens were once divided between two powers: the US and the Soviet Union. But geopolitics is never static. The People’s Republic of China is now the third-ranking space power and likely to challenge US military and scientific dominance. Post–Cold War, many more nations became spacefaring. At the turn of the twenty-first century, they numbered fourteen. The ranks have since swelled to ninety-one. The top ten all have fifty or more satellites circling the planet. Canada makes the list at number nine.

The competition isn’t just confined to nations. The private sector has also raced into space. Starlink alone has launched an estimated 9,357 satellites to build “mega-constellations” that deliver telecommunications services to the planet. It has plans for as many as 42,000. Multiply that by rival networks from China and Europe. Yet there is no binding international law requiring operators to disclose the location of their spacecraft, and most do not carry beacons or other tracking devices. The result is a rapidly crowded domain, packed with infrastructure whose precise movements aren’t always known.

It’s into this teeming sky that ThothX peers. The iron giant has been given brothers, too: spread across the globe, using radar beams to ping every spacecraft, fragment, and change in trajectory that would otherwise remain invisible—a job that, until recently, only governments could afford. Quine dubs the system Earthfence. It is quintessential, dual-use technology. Any commercial operator with assets in orbit needs it. So does the Canadian military, which is now funding its expansion as part of a widening effort to keep watch on the crowded highways overhead. In short: spycraft for space.

Quine’s company also reflects a deeper shift. The planet’s most valuable real estate no longer sits on the ground but moves above the atmosphere—an orbital economy that must be protected. And the first step is knowing who else shares the neighbourhood.

The satellites of today are a far cry from the Sputniks of old. No longer lone and harmless metal basketballs emitting a beep as they circle the earth, today’s satellites come in extraordinary profusion, ranging in size from slightly bigger than a Rubik’s Cube (often launched by universities for education and small-scale experiment) to a school bus (typically spy satellites).

They operate in height bands around the earth, from low-earth orbit—anywhere from 160 to 2,000 kilometres high—through to way out there at 36,000 kilometres. They can manoeuvre and nestle up to other satellites; using robotic arms, some can remove debris, undertake repairs, tow defunct assets, or engage in outright sabotage. Some are fitted with lasers—known as dazzlers—that can temporarily blind sensors. Others collect intelligence, not just on what’s happening down on earth but around them. Plans are in place for so-called “bodyguard” satellites to shadow critical spacecraft, watching for trouble. Fears have emerged that the Russians are testing nuclear-armed satellites, designed to make space orbit untenable.

And the hardware keeps showing up. One estimate indicates an average of over 3,700 satellite launches per year, or ten per day, including military and government spacecraft. That all this stuff is flying blind only increases the risk of accidents, misperceptions, or escalation.

With no shared code governing conduct in space, the US has taken the lead, fielding “inspection” satellites and an expanding web of ground-based optical sensors that register movement by catching reflected sunlight and thermal signature. For decades, the Department of Defense (now the Department of War) has collected the data and shared it with allies around the world. Leading space security researcher Jessica West believes that role is now “under strain” as the number of objects grow. “The volume of data can be overwhelming,” she explains. “Warnings are often too frequent or too imprecise to be actionable, leading to alert fatigue.”

That operational strain is colliding with another dangerous reality. While the US remains the world’s leading space power, there are growing challenges and threats. The US Space Force estimates that China and Russia are actively attempting to “disrupt and degrade” American space capabilities through “counterspace” tactics—or, in other words, attack. The Pentagon isn’t alone in its concerns. The Center for Strategic and International Studies, an independent US think tank, added new elements to its annual Space Threat Assessment. The 2025 edition includes electronic warfare, such as GPS jamming and spoofing, as well as repeated cyberattacks.

The belief in safety information as a public good is further tested by the fact the US is also no longer the only actor shaping what can be seen. Russia maintains a separate catalogue, known as Vimpel, and China is reportedly developing another.

The response from the Canadian Armed Forces has been to build its own picture of the orbital environment and not simply trust what allies choose to disclose. Four years ago, 3 Canadian Space Division was created to manage the military space program. A core duty is to guarantee the integrity of Canada’s satellites while monitoring the growing snarl of objects that can compromise them. Since 2024, the division has been led by Brigadier-General Christopher Horner, who traces his enthusiasm for space to youthful, backyard experiments with model rockets—one of which, he told me, set fire to the back of his neighbour’s house.

For Horner, a number provides the rationale for 3 CSD. The Royal Canadian Air Force estimates that nearly 20 percent of the Canadian economy functions on “space-enabled architecture.” Lose those systems, and you lose about a billion dollars of gross domestic product per day.

Earthfence, and its iron giant, may be part of the solution.

ThothX is focused on the most valuable real estate in space: geostationary orbit, or GEO. Roughly 35,000 kilometres up, the satellites move in lockstep with the planet, permanently perched over and watching a specific patch of the world. GEO is where the action is. It hosts weather monitoring, global television, missile warning, and electronic eavesdropping. The occupants of this zone are the largest, most expensive satellites ever built. Quine calls them the “Lamborghinis of the space world.”

The Algonquin dish could only capture one portion of the sky, over the Americas. Quine needed at least two more telescopes of similar capacity to monitor the entirety of GEO satellites. He used Google Earth to look for large, disused antennae, with dish sizes of at least thirty metres, not too damaged, then relied on local knowledge to tell him more about the condition of the sites. There was a promising one in Madagascar, but on closer examination, its focusing apparatus had fallen through the centre of the antenna. It was beyond salvage.

He found one in Western Australia, north of Perth. It was originally built for the Apollo moon landing program and then abandoned. Once leased and refurbished—a considerable quantity of bird poo had to be scraped from the antenna dish—it was in a perfect location to monitor geostationary satellites hovering over the Pacific. He found two more in Portugal, one in the Azores, to cover what ThothX calls the Meridian zone (basically Europe). Local companies were set up to operate them. Quine plans to acquire as many as ten.

The Canadian military has come calling for its services, twinning ThothX with MDA Space, the country’s leading aerospace and defence company—responsible for building the famous “Canadarm2” on the International Space Station. NATO has also taken notice through an initiative called DIANA (or Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic). An industrial network headquartered in London—with offices in places like Tallinn, Estonia and Halifax—DIANA is designed to identify promising defence products early, then surround them with capital, mentors, test facilities, and potential buyers. As Quine explained, acceptance into DIANA opens up the “black box” of business interest from other NATO countries.

For the Canadian military, introducing the Earthfence into their space-watching tool kit represents a major evolution. For one thing, it is a fully Canadian capability and builds on a pioneering homegrown effort to contribute to SDA through an optical satellite called Sapphire. Built by MDA Space and launched in 2013 from an Indian spaceport, Sapphire was Canada’s first military satellite—about the size of a washing machine. It was conceived as Canada’s price of entry into NORAD’s space surveillance network. Its onboard camera collects images of satellites for the US Space Force, and in return, Canada gets access to American data, including classified intelligence.

Although intended to operate for just five years, Sapphire is still active and flies alongside a smaller twin, a microsatellite known as NEOSSat (Near Earth Orbit Surveillance Satellite). Launched with Sapphire, NEOSSat is dual-use. It can track debris and spacecraft, but it also logs comets and asteroids and runs space-observation experiments.

However gratifying the longevity of Sapphire and NEOSSat, the clock is ticking on them both. They are set to be replaced under a classified DND project known colloquially as “Son of Sapphire”—or SofS 2. Scheduled for some time in the 2030s, SofS 2 will pair next-generation satellites with ground-based optical sensors. There is even a third iteration, planned into the 2040s. Horner described it as a bid to deploy novel sensors that deepen co-operation with the US, while also building “sovereign national capability.”

The bridge to this future, according to Horner, is a project called Redwing. An experimental microsatellite, it will be loaded with a host of sensors—including ones that can reach cislunar (near-moon) orbit—from a planned launch as early as 2026. It will also keep watch on manoeuvring satellites and snap close-ups of them. Sort of a celestial candid camera.

One of the Redwing missions will be to more effectively monitor satellite activity above the Polar regions. Defence Research and Development Canada, the tech arm of DND, describes the polar regions as “optically challenging” because of the light effects from the ice caps. SDA over the southern hemisphere is, in particular, limited. To accomplish this mission, the Redwing will be accompanied by a smaller craft, developed with the United Kingdom, called LISSA, or “Little Innovator in Space Situational Awareness.”

All this experimentation and planning is in military hands. I put the question to Horner: Can’t you just go with commercially developed systems? Leave it to the private sector? This is what the Canadian military is doing with Earthfence, after all.

His answer was yes, but only to a degree. There will always be military uses where he can’t rely on commercial systems alone or where operators might be antsy, say with purely spy missions. Dedicated surveillance, designed and controlled by those in uniform, is a necessary part of the equation. When you add in multilateral arrangements with defence partners globally, it may be a small part—as little as 5 percent, according to Horner.

But that 5 percent—the most sensitive watching—is where Canadian sovereignty lives.

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Sapphire, NEOSSat, Redwing, Son of Sapphire, Earthfence. What is all of this ultimately for? Why is it an important Canadian investment? The darkest reality is: for war fighting. Keeping a watch on space and any satellite threats is essential to preserve the military’s ability to communicate, navigate, collect intelligence, understand the weather, find targets for long-range precision strikes, and, if necessary, degrade an adversary’s space-based capabilities.

But there is a brighter side. SDA can assist in avoiding collisions with other man-made objects in space and help navigate out of harm’s way when confronted by space debris, of which there is an extraordinary amount. Some of that debris is sizeable. NASA estimates there are over 25,000 debris objects in space larger than ten centimetres. If you go smaller, down to one millimetre, then the number is, well, astronomical—in excess of 100 million. Even the smallest piece of debris, when hurtling at high speed in near-earth orbit, can cause damage in collisions.

There is also strategic doctrine attached to SDA. It can help avoid conflict escalation in space, acting as a deterrent to risk-taking by other space-faring nations. Deterrence works, at least in theory, when your adversaries know you are watching and that you can call out bad behaviour or respond in kind. SDA can also be a tool of space diplomacy to try to preserve an open and free space environment for all, the supreme goal of the United Nations Outer Space Treaty, signed in 1967. It can maybe, in the long run, help establish internationally agreed-upon rules of the road for the use of space, something that is sorely deficient.

For a mid-size nation, Canada is set to become a major player in a new space race, combining military need, entrepreneurial science, industrial innovation, and commercial ambition. It’s not just about blasting innumerable payloads into space to service the world’s needs and keep a watch on our torn planet. It’s not just about going to the moon again or maybe even Mars. This is a race to know what is going on in the increasingly congested, contested, and competitive environment girding Earth.

Here’s a Sputnik-era parody of a favourite nursery rhyme that I remember:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star How I wonder what you are Shining in the sky so bright, Bet you’re a Commie Satellite!

In this new space race, betting on what that twinkling object in space might be, and what it’s up to, is no longer good enough.

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