There is an undercurrent at this years International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Baku, Azerbaijan that isn’t being reported in the media. Approximately 400 km west of the capital Baku over 120,000 people are fleeing the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the long disputed and overwhelmingly Christian enclave within Azerbaijan’s boundaries.

On September 29, 1962 Canada became the third nation in space with the historic launch of the Alouette-1 satellite. 61 years later the Canada Space Agency has completed a massive restoration of data from the mission and made that data publicly available.

The Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA) provided its quarterly update through its Cassiopeia Autumnal Equinox newsletter recently. The newsletter provides an update to its members on existing programs such as the proposed CASTOR space telescope, the Square Kilometre Array and other timely news.

Seven years after the OSIRIS-REx Mission launched to Asteroid Bennu one of the key goals has been achieved, that of returning a sample safely back to Earth.

Rogers Communications announced today that it was going to use ground sensors in combination with small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) for wildfire detection.

GHGSat has released details of a significant methane leak, this time in the UK. In this case, when alerted, the operator of the leaking pipeline, fixed the issue quickly. GHGSat said this was the first time a “UK methane emission has been seen from space and mitigated.”

Most Canadian live in a city where the view of the majestic night sky is impacted by light pollution. If they could see the sky in the countryside they would be amazed at the amount of satellites that are flying overhead. A project at Western University is now using meteor tracking cameras to monitor the growing number of satellites in orbit.

A record number of Canadian locations, 12, will host the annual NASA International Space Apps Challenge on October 7 and 8.

A month after announcing that it had cleared the finance hurdle for its Lightspeed constellation and brought MDA onboard as its prime manufacturer, Telesat announced yesterday a launch contract with SpaceX.

Toronto based Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) announced last Thursday (Sept. 8) that the satellites they built for GHGSat had “achieved sustained detection and measurement of methane emissions at double the design capacity of the satellites.”