Two massive northern Alberta wildfires sparked an idea among some University of Alberta students that has really taken off — all the way into outer space.
The U of A was among 15 universities who learned Friday that they will receive funding from the Canadian Space Agency to design and build a cube satellite — a powerful satellite that is about the size of a loaf of bread — which will launched into space in either 2020 or 2021.
The mission of the Alberta satellite, named Ex-Alta2, will be to monitor forest fires and fire risk on Earth, said Callie Lissina, a third-year mechanical engineering student and the AlbertaSat project manager.
"We'll put a computer, a radio and a bunch of other instruments on the satellite to enable us to take photos of the Earth and download them so we can identify forest fire risk areas and actively monitor burning fires," she said in a interview with CBC's Radio Active.
"It will be able to predict where forest fires are most likely to start, monitor ones that are actively burning and monitor the post-burn scar effect that the fire leaves on the land when its done."
Data would be analyzed and could then be provided to interested clients, such as the Alberta government, she said.
A model of a cube satellite, on display during the Friday announcement that the University of Alberta has been approved to design, build and launch one into space. (CBC)
"The Department of Agriculture and Forestry could use our data to allocate firefighting resources if we've identified which spots are at the highest risk for forest fires," she said.
Ex-Alta2 will be the university's second cube satellite in outer space. Its first, Ex-Alta1, was launched in April 2017 with a mission to gather information about space weather and its potential impact on power and communication systems.
Along with forest fire monitoring and prediction, Lissina said Ex-Alta2 will also fly a magnetometer, which is the same space weather–measuring instrument that is on Ex-Alta1. "So we'll continue our mission here of understanding the space environment."
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U of A students explore out-of-this-world solution to forest fires | CBC News