UNB's Quiet Role in NASA's Biggest Missions Keeps Growing

When most people picture space exploration, they picture Florida launch pads, Houston mission control, or a rover on Mars — not Fredericton. But UNB's growing NASA footprint, profiled this week by the university's newsroom, is quietly appearing in some of the most ambitious space missions running today — on the surface of Mars and around the Moon.

On the Mars rover's science team

Two UNB researchers are members of the team supporting NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover mission: Dr. Lucy Thompson and Dr. Catherine O'Connell-Cooper. Last year their work contributed to a discovery offering new insight into the planet's history — and into whether Mars may once have supported conditions suitable for life.

It's the kind of finding that feeds the two biggest questions in planetary science: how planets evolve, and whether life exists beyond Earth.

The only Canadian university tracking Artemis II

Closer to home, UNB is doing something no other Canadian university was asked to do. In 2026, Dr. Brent Petersen of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Dr. Richard Langley of the Department of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering — working through the UNB Earth Station with student researchers — received and tracked radio signals from the Orion spacecraft Integrity as it travelled around the Moon on NASA's Artemis II mission.

UNB was the only Canadian university selected to help track the mission, joining an international network supporting spacecraft communications. For a department celebrating a century of electrical engineering this year, it's a fresh milestone: Fredericton-built expertise on the ground side of humanity's return to the Moon.

The pipeline behind it

The Earth Station — which receives and processes satellite data — doubles as a training ground where students work hands-on with the same kinds of tools and technologies used by NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the European Space Agency, across satellite technology, planetary science, remote sensing, and communications.

That's the quiet part of UNB's space story, and arguably the most New Brunswick part: the same research-and-student pipeline that feeds the province's tech employers also feeds humanity's space program.

Sources

• Space happens here: Inside UNB's growing role in NASA missions — UNB newsroom feature (Aug. 17, 2026); Curiosity team membership, Artemis II tracking, Earth Station details
• UNB Earth Station — satellite data reception and student training facility
• NASA Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity — mission context for the rover science team