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.
Read More »Lawlessness on the Final Frontier
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.
Read More »Rationale and Framework for a Canadian National Space Policy
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.
Read More »China’s Surging Military Space Program – Space Quarterly Archives
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 …
Read More »The New Race for the Moon – Space Quarterly Archives
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.
Read More »Business Matters, Even in Space, Especially in Space – Thoughts and Highlights From Ascension 2017
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 …
Read More »Harrison Schmitt Talks Commercial Moon and Mars
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.
Read More »This Week in Space for Canada
Space tourist Guy Lalibert publishes his orbital scrapbook, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronauts step up their efforts to remind us that they “still have a bright future,” although maybe not as government astronauts and the new federal minister of industry (who’s also responsible for the CSA) has a background in agriculture and natural resources management, which should give him a understanding of the growing space …
Read More »This Week in Space for Canada
MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) promises to either buy a space company with US roots or else return to shareholders the $793 million CDN acquired from the January sale of it’s property-information business. Maybe they should talk with executives at Telesat, who declined again to discuss efforts to sell their company during the quarterly Telesat conference call on Thursday. Meanwhile, back in academia, researchers at the University …
Read More »This Week in Space for Canada
The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) remembers it’s past and ponders it’s future, COM DEV International subsidiary exactEarth Ltd. successfully launches its automatic identification system (AIS) payload from India and campaigning ex-astronaut and current politician Marc Garneau discusses innovation, entrepreneurship and public policy this Wednesday. All that and more, this week in space for Canada.
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