In Grade 12, while on a family trip to Florida, Jaden Chow accidentally ran into McMaster’s first space mission.
Chow, who’s had a passion for space science since a young age, had convinced his parents to stop at the Kennedy Space Center – where he saw students in leather jackets preparing for nothing less than a satellite launch.
It was McMaster’s NEUDOSE team. Chow happened to meet them the same day that they were launching their state-of-the-art satellite and radiation detector aboard a SpaceX rocket, at a location just a 20-minute drive away.
“We went to this beach in Florida and we watched the rocket launch live, which was my first ever rocket launch,” he said. “The stars literally aligned for me to be in the same room as them, and for the launch to be that night.”
Learn more about McMaster’s NEUDOSE team and their 2023 satellite launch.
He’d been debating where to apply for university. Meeting the Mac students in an “insane coincidence,” and watching them do the type of work he’d dreamed of, sealed his decision. “I was like, ‘sold. I have to go to McMaster. I have to do engineering. This is going to be my future.’”
Three years later, Chow is a third-year Engineering Physics and Management Co-op student at McMaster. His experiences at the university have recently led him to achieve a childhood dream: working at the Canadian Space Agency.
Early ambitions
You might be surprised to learn that Chow, who has been on the Dean’s Honor List since second year, found university and engineering classes overwhelming at first. “But then once I got into the pace of it, I fit right in. I love it now.”
Chow does a Taekwondo jumping kick.
Joining student clubs helped him find his rhythm at university: In first year, he joined the Mac Pops Orchestra, and in second year joined the McMaster Engineering Jazz Band, playing violin in both. He has a black belt in Taekwondo and has trained with the McMaster Taekwondo team since first year; he loves the strong community there, and also that it’s “a physical way to relax and destress after intense engineering classes.”
In his second year, he joined the McMaster Advanced Space Systems (MASS) as a junior mechanical engineer, where he gained technical experience and exposure to even more of the space world. But his long-term goal was to join the McMaster Interdisciplinary Satellite Team (MIST) – the new name for NEUDOSE, the team he had met in Florida.
MIST is special because they’re partnered with the CUBICS Initiative, run by the Canadian Space Agency to give university students the opportunity to design, build, test, launch and operate their own miniature satellite called a CubeSat.
Getting onto the satellite team as a junior mechanical engineer was the “highlight of my entire year,” Chow said. He gained experience with 3D modelling in SolidWorks, machine custom parts and satellite assembly. “A lot of mechanical work.”
His time with MIST prepared him for his newest – and most exciting – chapter yet, an engineering project management internship with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
He’s now in Montreal, completing the four-month internship over the winter 2026 term. His role involves active engineering project management, performing risk assessments, and developing tracking tools to support the leadership of complex space systems.
Real-world impacts
Chow gets to work on two specific projects while he’s at the CSA.
One is the Arctic Observation Mission, an international Earth observation mission concept to put two satellites into orbit and give scientists new view of weather and climate patterns in the Arctic. According to the CSA site, “It could deliver major benefits for people living in northern communities, including Indigenous peoples, by increasing safety and quality of life thanks to improved weather and air quality forecasts. It would also provide humanity with valuable information about climate change.”
The second project Chow is working on is the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM). Launched in 2019, three identical satellites work together to observe Earth and bring solutions to key challenges including maritime surveillance, ecosystems monitoring and disaster management.
“All my love for space science comes back to humanity and back to Canada,” Chow said. “It has real world impacts, which I love.”
Everyone at the CSA, from coworkers to fellow students, have been some of the most outgoing and friendly people he’s worked with, Chow said. “Everyone is unbelievably talented and I’m so grateful to have the chance to work alongside them.”
It’s a diverse environment where everyone is bilingual; many people speak three or more languages. (Chow, who is half Lebanese and half Chinese, jokes that he speaks 2.5 – he’s practicing French and Arabic with relatives and Duolingo, and also speaks a few sentences of Mandarin and Cantonese. He aspires to one day be fluent in all five languages.)
In January, Chow got to attend the CSA Space Conference in Ottawa with fellow students from the CSA.
This experience has reaffirmed that the CSA – or anything in the Canadian space sector – is where he wants to be.
“It’s really important in this geopolitical era that we stop the brain drain, we keep the intelligence and engineering here in Canada, especially in our space industry,” he said.
“Canada’s autonomy and sovereignty over our own space sector is paramount. We need to keep the engineers here. We must prioritize domestic satellite capabilities, rather than remaining dependent on foreign agencies for critical data.”
Future missions
Once he completes his internship with the CSA, he’ll move on to a 16-month internship that he has lined up with aerospace company Pratt & Whitney Canada, working on engine dynamics.
Then he’ll come back to McMaster to finish his degree. “My dream is that after I graduate from McMaster, I’ll be able to join the engineering graduate program at the Canadian Space Agency.”
It’s a big dream, but he’s used to that, and to putting in the effort to make it happen. “I had to work really hard to get here.”
Instrumental with their support are his parents, Rania and Bernard Chow – who are also both Mac alumni. Bernard graduated from Mechanical Engineering in 2000, and Rania in 2001.
“Their photo is still on the third floor of JHE in the mechanical engineering hallway, which is cool, to walk past my parents on the way to a lecture,” Chow said. “They were a big help in my journey to this moment and I would not be here without them.”
Jaden Chow with his family in Hong Kong. His parents, Bernard and Rania Chow, are also both Mac engineering alumni.
“They taught me hard work, perseverance, just keep pushing through. If you don’t understand something, always ask,” he said.
He remembers feeling lost and overwhelmed in classes, sitting in 400-person lecture halls and “just terrified to even be there.”
But he kept his parents’ advice in mind: You never know unless you ask.
“I didn’t know what was happening on the board, so even though I was too scared to raise my hand in the moment, after lecture, I’d always stay behind and ask profs, why does this work?”
Chow with close friends at McMaster.
Through every exam, quiz and grade, he’s also held onto his parent’s belief in “falling forward.”
“It’s okay to fail, as long as you learn from those mistakes and keep moving forward… you always make progress from failure. It’s never the end.”
“You may fail quizzes, you may fail tests, but that doesn’t decide where you’ll end up in the future,” he said. “Small setbacks should never stop you from dreaming big.”