The CASI ASTRO 18 conference began by addressing a key topic much of the Canadian space community thinks about, the future of Canada’s space sector. 

The 2018 Humans to Mars Report was released last week at the annual Human to Mars Summit held in Washington, DC. The report reinforced a notional date of 2033 for the first humans to Mars mission.

For the first time since the early 70’s humanity is preparing to venture beyond low Earth orbit. In so doing we’ll have to deal with a variety of potential health problems including visual impairment.

While the CASI ASTRO 18 conference officially gets underway today, yesterday CASI held the Space Systems Resilience Workshop which enabled the various stakeholders to get together with an eye towards further laying the groundwork for a roadmap.

Recently the Aerospace Corporation Center for Space Policy and Strategy released a paper that discusses the long-standing Canada – U.S. military space relationship and how it is an ideal case study for other alliances.

The Harwell Space Cluster in the United Kingdon is host to 80 organizations with 800 employees. One of those companies is Open Cosmos led by its founder Rafael Jorda Siquier.

It was a good news, bad news quarterly conference call for Maxar Technologies which includes Canadian subsidiary MDA.

This fall Canada will launch three identical large Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites, the RADARSAT Constellation Mission. At the moment they are being integrated at MDA’s Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue facility on the island of Montreal.

It is unprecedented and it’s about time. The announcement that the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) had selected 15 university teams to participate in the Canadian CubeSat Project was made last Friday at the University of Manitoba by astronaut Jenni Sidey. The selected teams insure that there is representation from every province and territory. This is a national endeavour.

Space Policy in Canada is “going through some real deep reflection” and needs a national space act, this according to David Kendall, Chair of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.