The recent announcement by Microsat Systems Canada (MSCI) CEO David Cooper that his company is “launching a new initiative” to build a constellation of 78 small, relatively low-flying satellites designed to relieve internet and smart phone congestion and provide broadband access in rural locations, highlights the differences between small space focused Canadian firms and their larger commercial satellite and internet service provider cousins.
Read More »Building Curiosity: Landing System Drop Test
Engineers test the first-of-its-kind landing system on NASA’s next Mars rover, Curiosity.
Read More »This Week in Space for Canada
Mississauga-based Microsat Systems Canada (MSCI) announces it’s building a massive (perhaps too good to be true) constellation of 78 small, relatively low-flying satellites designed to relieve network smart phone congestion. Macdonald Dettwiler (MDA) will be “exercising an option” for additional work on the Orbital Sciences Corporation (Orbital) developed Cygnus cargo spacecraft and even ComDev International gets a new military contract from the US government. All …
Read More »MDA Puts Robotic Expertise to Good use for Orbital's Cygnus Spacecraft
MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) is taking advantage of their expertise in robotics as they recently signed a multi-million dollar contract amendement with Orbital Sciences Corporation to provide capture and mating solutions for Orbital’s autonomous Cygnus commercial resupply service spacecraft.
Read More »SpaceX Commercial Crew Development Proposal
SpaceX’s proposal to accelerate evolution of the Dragon spacecraft to a crew transportation system.
Read More »Orbital Cygnus Resupply Service to the ISS
Animation of the Orbital Cygnus spacecraft commercial cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station.
Read More »RADARSAT-2 Images Shows Devastating Flooding in Australia
The Canadian Space Agency released one of the images captured by Radarsat-2 which were delivered to the International Charter Space and Major Disasters on behalf of Emergency Management Australia and the State of Queensland, Australia. The featured image shows Australia’s northeastern state of Queensland.
Read More »NASA – The Frontier is Everywhere Video Goes Viral, But Why?
Every now and then a video comes along that goes viral with an unexpected impact. In this case the video titled “NASA – The Frontier is Everywhere” by Canadian Reid Gower of Victoria has done just that. Gower created the video because he was frustrated with NASA.
Read More »Planck's View of the Cosmos
Launched less than two years ago the Planck Space Telescope has released a new catalogue of data that includes thousands of never before seen dusty cocoons where stars are forming and some of the most massive clusters of galaxies ever observed. Planck’s mission is to detect light from just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, an explosive event at the dawn of …
Read More »This Week in Space for Canada
NASA “sole sources” a $31.2 million contract to a US firm to “execute demonstrations” on the Canadian built Dextre robot as the James Webb Space Telescope goes so far over budget as to endanger other NASA programs. This seems only to encourage the beleaguered US space agency to obsess painfully about whether it should be listening to “Homer Simpson” or “Elon Musk.” All that and …
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