Mission Control Space Services

Mission Control Space Services is an Ottawa, Ontario-based space software company founded in 2015 by Ewan Reid, a former NASA Johnson Space Center mission controller and Canadian Space Agency rover subsystem design lead. The company's stated mission is to make modern software, including artificial intelligence, viable for use in space, so that distributed teams of scientists, engineers, mission operators and students can operate robots, payloads and spacecraft across Earth, the Moon, Mars and beyond.

Mission Control's flagship product is Spacefarer, a web-based mission operations platform for commanding and monitoring remote assets, and Spacefarer AI, a toolkit for building, deploying and visualizing onboard AI models on spaceflight and robotic hardware. The company says it was the first in the world to deploy deep learning AI in lunar orbit, and its AI models (including the MoonNet lunar surface classifier) have flown on Earth-orbit and lunar surface missions. Mission Control also designs Lunar Radios, flight-tested wireless communication and edge-computing modules used to link lunar landers and rovers during surface operations.

The company operates an 8,200 sq ft facility in Ottawa that includes an Orbital Autonomy Lab and the Moonyard, a roughly 4,000 sq ft lunar-analogue terrain facility used for rover testing and mission rehearsal, and also runs the free Rover Driving Academy STEM outreach program for grades 6-9 students in partnership with MDA Space and the Canadian Space Agency. Mission Control has worked with organizations including NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, ESA, Honeywell Aerospace, MDA Space, ispace, and Canada's Department of National Defence, and registered with Canada's Controlled Goods Program in 2021.