Canadian company Canadensys Aerospace Corporation has been awarded C$2.4 million in funding to develop a 360-degree (panoramic) camera that will capture images of the Moon’s surface from onboard a lunar lander.
The funding support comes from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Lunar Exploration Accelerator Program (LEAP), in which C$150 million is being invested over the next five years to assist new technologies to develop and be tested out at the Moon.
The camera will be able to capture images and videos, and it will also feature image processing and compression to minimize the data link requirements for sending the imagery back to Earth.
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| Canadensys Space Grade Imagers (credit: Canadensys) |
Cameras are an essential element of any planentary lander mission involving a rover so the CSA funding for this camera system are no doubt linked to thier plans to send an advanced rover to the Moon in a later mission.
This type of camera system will provide Earth-based remote operators of the rover a live monitoring capability allowing them to direct the lunar surface operations. One can imagine more complex rover missions later on to prepare for human missions, such as construction of roads, landing pads and habitats. Canadian lunar mining efforts, such as that of Deltion, could also benefit grately from such capabilities.
The Canadensys panoramic camera system will get its first lunar-surface test in 2022, flying to the Moon onboard ispace's HAKUTO-R lander (see excellent video at that link), described in the infographic below.
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| Hakuto-R Lander Infographic (credit ispace) |
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