Astronaut and Expedition 25 Commander Doug “Wheels” Wheelock was the honored guest at a Tweetup held at NASA Headquarters on Mar. 16. More than 90 “Tweeps,” or users of the social medium Twitter, were on hand to see Wheelock’s presentation of his recent five-month-plus stay aboard the International Space Station.

The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced yesterday that they are providing $16 million in new funding for seven new research projects on regenerative medicine and nanomedicine.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has announced the 1st Canadian Workshop on Orbital Debris to be held June 21-22 at the Canadian Space Agency conference centre in St-Hubert. The announcement follows the announcement last fall that the CSA became a full member of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC).

Next Friday in Toronto the Canadian Space Commerce Association will be holding it’s annual meeting with the theme The Next Breakthrough Space Technologies for Canada. The event will bring together executives, business owners, independent consultants, venture capitalists, scientists, engineers, R&D managers and students. Some of Canada’s top commercial space companies will be represented along with smaller new companies, academia, the military and the Canadian Space …

The government announced this morning that the federal budget will be tabled on March 22nd. At that time it is expected that the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will receive an increase in it’s budget by 8.7%, this according to the National Post.

At 4:53 p.m. eastern the space shuttle Discovery launched on what is her final mission. It was a launch whose countdown went smoothly until the final few minutes when a range safety command computer malfunctioned, almost postponing the launch a day.

NASA mission managers met yesterday morning and gave space shuttle Discovery a GO for launch today at 4:50 p.m. eastern. The mission is a key one for the International Space Station and for Canada it’s an opportunity to conduct research and bring back experiments from the International Space Station.

Last Thursday the X Prize Foundation announced the final entries in the Google Lunar X Prize and the lone Canadian entry was submitted and approved just before the deadline. The official roster of entered teams now stands at 29 from four continents. They are vying for a total of $30 million in prizes. To win the teams must send a robot to the Moon and …

With the President’s Fiscal Year 2012 Budget proposal, NASA will continue leading a quest to win the future and help the nation innovate, educate and build by working to protect Earth, uncover distant worlds, and expand the frontiers of technology.