The sky is no limit: UCalgary’s legacy of space science innovation

In 2002, undergraduate student Emma Spanswick walked down a University of Calgary Physics department hallway and changed the course of both her career and global space science. She had just been turned down for a summer job when she ran into physics professor Dr. Eric Donovan, PhD.

Months earlier, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) had handed Donovan control of Canada’s ground array of riometers — broad-beam radio telescopes “set on an unfortunate frequency where space weather gets in the way (of clear signals)," explains Spanswick. 

At the time, few people wanted to work with the messy pile of information the riometers were collecting, and the government was about to shut them down permanently.

“Though I didn’t understand them, I could see there was clearly information in the data,” says Donovan. So, he hired Spanswick for a summer job to see what she could find. 

“It was not sexy data,” says Spanswick. “Just line plots with wiggles in it.” 

By the end of the summer, though, she had developed groundbreaking techniques to wrangle the riometer information into usable data. Once she and Donovan began publishing and presenting the work, the space-science community realized that riometers were quietly collecting a wealth of valuable information. 

Just four years after that first summer job, Dr. Esa Turunen, PhD — then director of the prestigious Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory — told space-scientists at an international meeting that riometers were undergoing a global renaissance, “completely due to the work of Emma Spanswick.” She was still a UCalgary master’s student at the time.

Now Dr. Emma Spanswick, BSc'02, MSc'04, PhD'09, is an associate professor at UCalgary and her innovative work with riometers is an integral part of the internationally recognized research conducted by UCalgary’s Space Science Group. The group studies the Earth-Space environment — the highly dynamic, electrically active region above us where our planet’s atmosphere interacts with space and our sun. It’s where the brilliant greens and pinks of the aurora come to life, and where space weather influences satellites, communications, navigation systems and power grids on Earth. 

As we become more reliant on these technologies, it’s never been more critical to understand the fundamental properties and behaviour of Earth-Space, and to develop the tools to study it. With long-held partners around the world that include NASA, the CSA and the European Space Agency (ESA), UCalgary space scientists continue to define the frontier of space science. It’s a legacy that’s been decades in the making.

The dawn of the Space Age

The term “space science” was popularized in the 1950s, following the Soviet Union's launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957 as part of the International Geophysical Year (IGY). The IGY was an exciting time for a number of reasons, says Dr. Dave Knudsen, PhD, professor and head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCalgary. It marked the end of a long period of Cold War non-co-operation between scientists in the East and West and ushered in the Space Race. 

“The IGY began a global effort to measure solar-terrestrial interactions,” he explains.

As part of Canada’s contribution to the IGY, a Cosmic Ray Station was established on Sulphur Mountain in Banff National Park, and the UCalgary Department of Physics was established shortly after in 1963.

“Things evolved pretty quickly after that,” says Knudsen. 

By the 1970s, UCalgary scientists were on the front line, conducting research and developing new instruments to measure the Earth-Space environment. In 1971, UCalgary space physicist Dr. Cliff Anger led the team that developed the auroral photometer, an instrument carried aboard the Canadian satellite ISIS II that captured one of the first truly global images of the aurora. The images forever changed the way the world saw the northern and southern lights.

“It was a milestone measurement and image,” says Knudsen, and it helped solidify UCalgary’s place at the frontier of space science. Since then, the group has participated in more than 20 space missions, conducting research and designing instruments that collect data about Earth-Space from rockets, balloons, and satellites. The ability to collect data in-situ rather than trying to figure it all out from the ground has revolutionized the field, says Knudsen. 

“It’s astronomy up close,” he says.

UCalgary’s formative missions include GEODESIC, a CSA-funded suborbital space rocket (sounding rocket) project led by Knudsen in 2000. The rocket carried UCalgary-designed instruments designed to study plasma — the matter that makes up the majority of the visible universe. The instruments increased the precision with which scientists could observe the charged particles of plasma in the aurora, meaning they could better understand energy transfer from the sun to the Earth. The work was foundational for many reasons, including providing a better understanding of how long spacecraft can remain in low Earth orbit, where the atmospheric density can vary widely. GEODESIC helped pave the way for future missions and further cemented UCalgary as a leader in the design of new instruments.

Gaining international recognition

Similarly, UCalgary gained international recognition for its role in the landmark 2007 THEMIS mission. The mission involved the launch of five satellites designed to learn more about substorms — brief events in the strongest part of the Earth’s magnetic field that release stored energy from solar winds. The storms cause aurora to shift from slowly shimmering waves of light to wildly shifting streaks of colour. 

With the University of California Berkeley, UCalgary co-led the development and deployment of a continent-wide network of ground-based, specialized cameras that could image aurora across the whole sky and confirm when the satellites passed through the storms. 

“THEMIS was the first real attempt by our field to make the right global observations to answer a specific scientific question,” explains Donovan, who was UCalgary’s lead. It demonstrated the power of land-based imaging working in concert with in-situ data collection in Earth-Space. For UCalgary, Donovan says, “It was the beginning of 25 years of continuous funding for projects.”

Funding and strategic collaboration is critical for space missions and research. UCalgary has long-established relationships with space agencies across the globe, and, since 2012, UCalgary researchers have led all Canadian universities in funding from the CSA. For example, based on his reputation for Earth-Space field instrument innovation, the CSA awarded UCalgary physics professor Dr. Johnathan Burchill, PhD, a contract in 2016 to develop a miniature version of a plasma imager that could fit in a loaf of bread-sized CubeSat satellite.

“CubeSats are a standard for having your satellites launched on rockets like SpaceX Falcons,” says Burchill. The imager measured the winds and temperatures of charged particles in the Earth-Space environment.

Part of the success of UCalgary’s space-science team is owed to the collaborative and integrated work between the teams that comprise it. When amateur aurora photographers alerted Donovan to a recurring purple arc in the sky, which they named “STEVE,” he set out to capture it. One July morning in 2016, he finally did — and, with luck, so did one of the ESA’s Swarm satellites that happened to pass straight through it. 

Knudsen is the lead scientist for Swarm’s Electric Field Instruments, and his PhD student, Bill Archer, quickly pulled the satellite data. Between the ground imaging and the satellite, “within an hour, with U of C data, we had it all figured out,” explains Donovan. 

STEVE turned out to be a newly discovered phenomenon — a narrow jet of very fast-moving particles that heat the air and cause it to glow. Donovan remembers everyone in the room celebrating. 

“It was, in a scientific sense, by far the most exciting morning of my life.”

Satellites, instrument innovation and rockets

UCalgary’s Space Science Group further strengthens its program by collaborating with other faculties.

With Schulich School of Engineering professor Dr. Susan Skone, PhD'99, Spanswick co-leads Space and Defense Technologies of Alberta (SD-Tech). The program is designed to bridge the gap between academic technology development and its application by industry and government. Skone, who led the project that put the first commercial off-the-shelf receiver on a CubeSat, is one of the pioneers in understanding the impacts of space weather on GPS systems, explains Spanswick.

Through SD-Tech, Skone and Spanswick collaborate on a project to provide Canada with critical weather information and defense-related communications capabilities in the high Arctic.

Alongside Spanswick, the UCalgary Space Science Group continues to head full throttle into the future of Earth-Space research and application. 

Dr. Chris Cully, BSc'99, MSc'01, PhD, associate professor, is the deputy principal investigator for the RADICALS (RADiation Impacts on Climate and Atmospheric Loss Satellite) mission, a joint UCalgary/UAlberta project that’s developing a major space satellite in Canada.

“This is the next big satellite that proudly builds on Canada’s space-science and spaceflight history,” he says. 

Cully and his team are building an X-ray imager that will fly on the mission — and, similar to past missions, such as the telecommunications and space weather research satellite CASSIOPE/ePOP, it will be run from a dedicated missions control room on the UCalgary campus. The imager will measure the highest-energy aurora, invisible from the ground, that’s generated when high-energy particles impact and change the upper atmosphere, which could affect Earth’s climate.

The project builds on, and informs, Cully’s foundational work to understand the behaviour of the Van Allen radiation belts. That work has implications in many areas, including satellite performance and the safety of astronauts on missions to the Moon and Mars.

Meanwhile, Burchill is working with engineering, finance, physics and astronomy students from the CalgaryToSpace team on FrontierSat, a CubeSat satellite scheduled to go into orbit in 2026. The CubeSat will contribute to the study of STEVE and is Calgary’s first-ever student-built satellite. 

“When you’re a student at UCalgary, you have opportunities to work on really cool science related to Earth-Space environment,” says Burchill. “You can help invent, design, build, and figure out how to interpret measurements from new kinds of instruments to make advances in this field.”

In a field defined by constant innovation and change, the Space Science Group thrives in a culture of strong mentorship and hands-on exploration. For more than 50 years they have pushed the boundaries of what is possible in their field. 

“This is the place where the hottest research in auroral physics and plasma physics is happening in Canada,” says Burchill. 

It’s a legacy still unfolding, burning ever brighter and lighting the way for the scientists who will follow.