Call it an orbiting Edward Scissorhands. Although Dextre’s first major robotic work on the International Space Station this month was delayed due to a snagged truss, both the Canadian Space Agency and NASA anticipate it will replace spacewalkers for minor outside tasks during and after the station’s construction. Launched in 2008 aboard STS-123, the Canadian robotic hand – built by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates in …

You know it’s a quiet mission when the journalists are more focused on milestones than the missile just launched. An hour after the near-flawless dawn flight to space by shuttle Discovery on April 5, the reporters on site talked about this fourth-last flight of the program, that record number of women in space, and the two Japanese meeting face to face for the first time.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) aims to troubadour through venues across the country, spreading information about what it is like to live on the International Space Station, courtesy of a $1.25-million solicitation it awarded to Expographiq (aka Crecan International Ltd.) in late November for an exhibit called “Living in Space”.

Space journalist Elizabeth Howell was among the 100 attendees at the first NASA launch tweetup at the Kennedy Space Center, Nov. 16, 2009. With a golden flash, space shuttle Atlantis punched through the first cloud hanging between the pad and her destination in Earth orbit.

A lunar or Martian rover appears to be among the priorities that will eventually be outlined in Canada’s Long-Term Space Plan, a planning tool the Canadian Space Agency says it has been working to complete during the past year. That information emerged from a series of CSA tenders – collectively worth at least $9.75 million – issued these past few weeks on Merx, a Canadian …