Late next year when a vehicle bound for the moon is scheduled to be launched into space on a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a little bit of Ottawa will be hitching a ride.
The Rashid lunar rover is being designed in the United Arab Emirates as part of the Gulf nation’s bid to ramp up its space exploration program. Among its key components is software made right here in Canada’s capital by Mission Control Space Services, a six-year-old startup based in Little Italy that’s now supplying technology to some of Earth’s most cutting-edge companies.