Late last Friday MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) announced it had formally closed the deal to acquire Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) after it had received regulatory approval and secured the necessary financing. MDA announced in their quarterly call yesterday that on the same day of the closing it had been contacted by the Canadian government with a request for proposal for the build phase, Phase …

Four months after announcing it’s intention to acquire Space Systems/Loral Inc., MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd (MDA) has cleared the one remaining major hurdle as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has completed its review and green-lighted the deal.

Now that the Sapphire satellite finally has a firm launch date on an Indian rocket on December 12th, the government has seen fit to call a media briefing at the David Florida Laboratory (DFL) to talk about the satellite and it’s mission for the benefit of the public.

This past week Canadian Space Agency President Steve MacLean signalled that the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) will proceed to the next phase, the build phase, and that contracts are forthcoming.

Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell gave the Helen Sawyer Hogg Lecture at the RASC General Assembly on June 30, 2012, entitled “Will the world end in 2012? The astronomical evidence”. Burnell is a British astrophysicist who discovered the first radio pulsars with her then thesis supervisor Antony Hewish.

Canadian Space Agency Astronaut Chris Hadfield is at the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne, Germany to train on a Columbus module mock-up. Hadfield will be a part of Expedition 34/35, a long-duration mission on board the International Space Station that launches in December 2012.

After years of delays, two important government satellites, NEOSSat and Sapphire along with two university built nanosatellites are now set to launch on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C20 on Wednesday, December 12 from India’s Satish Dhawan Space Center.

The Canadian Space Agency has released this video to commemorate Canada’s 50 years in space and shows a timeline of milestones starting with the launch of Canada’s first satellite in 1962, Alouette 1.

Cambridge University Press has released a new book, The International Atlas of Mars Exploration – The First Five Decades: 1953 to 2003, by Western University cartographer Philip J. Stooke. It is the second exploration atlas Stooke has created having previously released the popular International Atlas of Lunar Exploration.