Earth Observation

Recently Canadian Space Agency President Steve MacLean delivered the keynote speech for the 2012 Canadian Hydrographic Conference in Niagara Falls. The theme touched on the challenges for Canada in dealing with a warmer Arctic where the Northwest Passage could be clear of ice during summer within 25 years.

Last Monday, April 23rd, Canadian Space Agency President Steve MacLean was the guest luncheon speaker at the International Polar Year 2012 conference being held in Montreal. Below is the transcript of that speech. Of note, MacLean once again referred to some of Canada’s current and possible future satellites as “part of that (Canada) strategic infrastructure”.

On his latest stop in Japan as part of an Asian tour promoting all things Canadian, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced several initiatives with the Japanese government that includes a new Canada-Japan Memorandum for Promotion of Space Cooperation.

For six weeks in Ontario, NASA scientists and engineers lead a field campaign to study the science and mechanics of falling snow. The datasets retrieved will be used to generate algorithms which translate what the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core satellite “sees” into precipitation rates, including that of falling snow. Ground validation science manager Walt Petersen gives a summary of the GCPEx field campaign. Field …

Amazing video of a night pass by the International Space Station (ISS) over Canada. Visible are the cities of Vancouver and Seattle, the Rocky Mountains and the aurora borealis (or northern lights). The images were taken on February 4. The snowy Canadian landscape was lit by a near Full Moon. Look for the Manicougan Crater in Quebec near the end of the video. This and …

Lately, the International Space Station has been flying through geomagnetic storms, giving astronauts an close-up view of the aurora borealis just outside their windows. Courtesy NASA.

Commercial Satellites So, now another metric on this that we are doing well, in that we are a country that drives innovation with our programmatic spending, is the fact that on four out of five commercial satellites in the world, there are Canadian components. And that is probably one of the best metrics that we can give about our success and about how we are …

The International Space Station Now speaking of importance, let’s look at ISS, the International Space Station. You know this is – perhaps the most important aspect of the ISS is the fact that 18 countries can work together on something that is so amazing. It’s the most complex international project that has ever been conceived of and executed and it involved Canada, Russia, US and …

So suddenly and perhaps unexpectedly Canada became a space-faring nation. Yet we are very different from the two rivals that were involved in space. We lacked the resources. We lacked the population and of course we lacked that air experience or at least it appeared we lacked the experience. And to a large extent the Soviet Union and the United States went to space because …