{"id":604311,"date":"2026-04-14T22:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/604311\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T22:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T22:08:08","slug":"canadian-company-eyes-arctic-with-nasa-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/604311\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian company eyes Arctic with NASA technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pierre Renaud, vice president of engineering at Advantech Wireless Technologies Inc., joins BNN Bloomberg to spotlight Canada’s future in space comms. <\/p>\n

A Quebec company that helped power communications for NASA\u2019s Artemis program now plans to position that same technology for a very different frontier: Canada\u2019s Arctic.<\/p>\n

As Ottawa ramps up defence and sovereignty efforts in the North<\/a>, Advantech Wireless Technologies says systems designed to maintain contact between Earth and the moon could help close critical gaps in connectivity, surveillance and communications across some of the harshest environments on the planet.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work that we\u2019ve been doing for these high power transfers apply to different applications,\u201d says Pierre Renaud, the company\u2019s vice president of engineering.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can be for commercial application. It can be for governmental applications and the developing needs of the whole Canadian ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company has gotten significant support from the federal government to develop its deep space and Arctic communications. In 2018, it received $11.5 million to develop advanced satellite broadband networks.<\/a> This funding was a catalyst for creating space-grade solutions designed to bridge the digital divide in remote areas like the Canadian Arctic.<\/p>\n

Advantech says its equipment has already been operating in the Canadian Arctic for more than two decades, as well as within defence and commercial systems. Now, the company is looking to expand that footprint.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel that we can play a good role in the upcoming governmental needs,\u201d Renaud said, pointing to the company\u2019s existing deployments in Arctic and NATO-related systems as proof it can support future missions.<\/p>\n

From deep space to remote terrain<\/p>\n

Advantech was originally contracted to develop high-power solid-state amplifiers capable of handling the specialized frequencies required for NASA\u2019s lunar communications.<\/p>\n

Those systems are designed to transmit signals across cislunar space, the vast region stretching from Earth to roughly two million kilometres away, where maintaining a stable connection requires significantly more power and precision than traditional satellite communications.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis key know-how has been integrated into our towers and summit to platforms that can scale up to the very, very high power needed for transmission in deep space,\u201d says Renaud.<\/p>\n

He says the company has already deployed an initial set of transmitters for the Artemis-related mission and is preparing for future network demands as space agencies expand their lunar ambitions.<\/p>\n

Renaud says the West Island of Montreal has become a major knowledge pool for both ground and space technology, with a high concentration of experts and hardware development occurring within just 15 kilometers of Advantech, which can contribute to the mission. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pierre Renaud, vice president of engineering at Advantech Wireless Technologies Inc., joins BNN Bloomberg to spotlight Canada’s future…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,66,306],"class_list":{"0":"post-604311","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}