The stars have once again aligned for Canada’s leading space firm. Earlier this month, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., now known simply as MDA, a Canadian global communications and information enterprise providing technology solutions to commercial and government organizations worldwide, completed its $2.4 billion purchase of DigitalGlobe, an American-based global provider of high resolution Earth imagery and geospatial information.

The space industry is, quite literally, taking off. Commercial, for-profit actors mark the dawn of a new age of space – one pioneered not by governments, but by private sector trailblazers pushing the development of human space activity to new heights.

I have been prompted to write this Paper with the publication in August of the excellent Space Advisory Board’s (SAB) report titled Consultations on Canada’s Future in Space: What We Heard. This Paper is also the result of analyzing national space policies for many years.

Continuing with our Summer Reading Series of articles or interviews that still have some relevance today, we present Craig Covault’s March 2013 article China’s Surging Military Space Program from Space Quarterly Magazine. Of note, China has completed eight launches to date this year with one failure and another satellite being placed in the incorrect orbit.  Two communications satellites, one of which is for a military use, were successfully placed …

Continuing with our Summer Reading Series of articles or interviews that still have some relevance today, we present Craig Covault’s June 2013 article The New Race for the Moon from Space Quarterly Magazine.

Hey, am I at the right conference? A first-time visitor might be forgiven for feeling a little confused. There was certainly no shortage of bleeding-edge science and engineering – asteroid mining, anyone? – but for much of this three-day event, the air was abuzz with talk of bootstrapping, venture capital funding (or lack thereof), pivoting, culture-building, and various and sundry other facets of the startup …

As a member of the Apollo 17 mission in 1972, former NASA Astronaut Harrison ‘Jack’ Schmitt was the last man to step onto the Moon. This week, Schmitt descended on Western University in London, Ont. to participate in the 2012 Canadian Space Summit.