Business

In a move that has blindsided the government, MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) is considering not subcontracting a significant piece of the RADARSAT Constellation Mission (RCM) to Magellan Aerospace as was expected.

What was once in the realm of science fiction is slowly transitioning to reality. A reality that has many challenges ahead before any reward, let alone, the creation of a sustaining industry. That industry is the exploitation of resources of the near-earth vicinity including the moon and asteroids.

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) has been awarded a contract to build a sophisticated mapping system for a joint Canada-US mission to retrieve samples of an asteroid.

After a successful launch yesterday aboard an Indian rocket, Canada’s critical Sapphire and NEOSSat satellites along with the other satellites launched have all communicated with ground control and appear to be working fine.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) released it’s annual State of the Canadian Space Sector Report earlier this month with its usual lack of notification. The report was supposedly released on December 3rd just days after the Aerospace Review report was released and just a couple of days before the Aerospace Summit. The question is why didn’t the CSA issue a press release about the report?

Laser technology has the image of being as futuristic as space travel itself, but lasers are being used for many purposes beyond their science fiction role as a weapon. And Canadian industry is taking a leading role in developing lasers for space applications. Canadian firms are world leaders in applying LIDAR (for light detection and ranging) technology in space, including inspecting tiles on the Space …