Can you spare a toonie? Ontario firm crowdfunding its all-Canadian mission to Mars

November 20, 2014 Innovation and Resources, Online Funding / Investing Campaigns, Stories No comments

Yahoo News Canada by Andrew Fazekas | November 19, 2014

Northern Lights Mission Mars 300x193 - Can you spare a toonie? Ontario firm crowdfunding its all-Canadian mission to Mars

Prototype of the aptly-named Beaver Rover. (Thoth Technology)

An Ontario company is hoping an ambitious crowdfunding campaign will take Canadian technology to the surface of Mars.

The Pembroke-based Thoth Technology has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise $1.1 million to build all the hardware for its Northern Lights mission to our neighbouring planet, with the goal of blasting off in 2018.

In partnership with York University, the mission will be designed specifically to explore the atmosphere, surface and subsurface of the the Red Planet with a mini-lander and a micro-rover in the hopes of detecting water and any evidence of past or present life.

“On-board instruments will be able to identify the presence of any photosynthetic life hiding below the surface of rocks – much like we find in the Arctic regions of Earth – where it is protected from ultra-violet radiation,” said Caroline Roberts, President and CEO of Thoth Technology.

Related: PayPal, SETI Institute, Buzz Aldrin and Space Leaders Launch PayPal Galactic

“We also plan to look for biogenic gases in the atmosphere and use ground-penetrating radar to determine whether there is horizontal stratification of the subsurface that might indicate the presence of a lake bed.”

Feedback from the space community has already been very helpful and is leaving the team extremely optimistic that their fundraising efforts will work. And there is precedent with the recent reboot of an old NASA spacecraft that had been in hibernation for 36 years after raising $160,000 through social media.

[youtube width="580" height="400"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Lr66N7Ilaw[/youtube]

While the federal government’s Canadian Space Agency has shown interest, Roberts and her team are attempting to go ahead as a privately-funded mission in an effort to speed up the process.

“Government-run missions tend to be extremely expensive, labour intensive and risk averse. If we want to see the widespread exploration of Mars, many landers will be required, and we must dramatically reduce the cost,” Roberts explained.

“As Burt Rutan demonstrated for suborbital flight with Spaceship One, a small, dedicated team of professionals can achieve the technological breakthroughs needed to make large-scale Mars exploration a reality.”

The group has already spent 12 years and $500,000 designing and developing working prototypes of all the hardware, and now they feel that crowdfunding the mission may offer the best avenue for success as well as disrupting space exploration at large.

Continue to the full article --> here

The National Crowdfunding Association of Canada (NCFA Canada) is a cross-Canada crowdfunding hub providing education, advocacy and networking opportunities in the rapidly evolving crowdfunding industry. NCFA Canada is a community-based, membership-driven entity that was formed at the grass roots level to fill a national need in the market place. Join our growing network of industry stakeholders, fundraisers and investors. Learn more About Us | Support Canadian Crowdfunding.