Dr. Nicole Buckley, Director of Life and Physical Sciences at the Canadian Space Agency, sees opportunities for the Canadian textile industry in space. Dr. Buckley will be presenting a paper entitled “A New niche for Canadian textiles – in space!” at the Expo Hightex in Montreal on October 8th. The focus would be on radiation protection and mitigation of the negative effects of spaceflight.

The Canadian Space Agency released two more requests for proposals (RFP’s) today bringing the total to 10 RFP’s released in the just over a week. The two new RFP’s are for a Miniaturized Drill Prototype for Lunar Exploration and a Combined Active and Passive Vision System for Localisation, Navigation and Visual Servicing.

On Thursday between 3:50 – 3:55 p.m eastern time, assuming all goes well, Canada’s Canadarm2 on the International Space Station will capture the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). The Japanese HTV is an unmanned spacecraft used to resupply the Kib Japanese Experiment Module and the rest of the International Space Station (ISS). You can watch the event on the Canadian Space Agency web site or …

The 2nd Halifax Meeting on Computational Astrophysics, the 18th Kingston Meeting will be held 16-18 (Friday – Sunday) October 2009 at Saint Mary’s University (SMU), Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

The Alberta Star Party is open to everyone – not just RASC members. We invite you and your family to attend the 23rd Annual Alberta Star Party. The star party is hosted by the Calgary Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and we feel that you will be impressed by the dark and transparent skies. This year, the party will run from September …

The Canadian Space Summit is an annual event hosted by the Canadian Space Society. The Summit is explicitly dedicated to helping the Canadian space industry and related special interest groups develop a wider understanding of the diverse space exploration and development projects that are being conducted across the country and to foster collaborative connections amongst the many companies and organizations involved.

Space Shuttle Atlantis, STS-129, ISS assembly flight ULF3, is the next planned space shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS) is targeted for a November 12, 2009 launch. The Canadian Space Agency-sponsored APEX-CAMBIUM science experiment will sent to the International Space Station.

The Second Workshop on Satellite Imaging of the Arctic will bring together scientists and remote sensing experts from countries with an interest in the Arctic region. They will discuss the full range of scientific and operational applications of high-latitude imagery data in the context of the Canadian Polar Communications and Weather (PCW) satellite mission, a concrete proposal for seamless imaging of the Arctic. Thereby, they …

The first of three images of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project — a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO’s observing sites in Chile — has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world.

This composite image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster shows 10-million- degree gas observed by Chandra in blue and jets of radio emission observed by the Very Large Array in pink. Optical data from the Canada- France-Hawaii telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey shows galaxies in the cluster.