SpaceQ Space news and analysis.
With a 70% chance of a weather violation the Space Shuttle Atlantis beat the odds and thrilled close to a million gathered people who waited hours to see the final launch of a Space Shuttle. (Video of launch available)
Read More »Space Shuttle Atlantis Poised for Launch – Weather Permitting
While everything is proceeding smoothly at this point in the countdown the weather is still an issue with “thick clouds” being the current problem. The White Room has just been closed out after the astronauts were securely fastened into the shuttle.
Read More »Incredible Images of Orbiter Endeavour and Space Station
These amazing pictures were taken from the International Space Station by a crew member and show the starry sky and Earth’s horizon along with the orbiter Endeavour on its last mission. Pictured with Endeavour is Canada’s Dextre robot which is attached the to the space station.
Read More »Canadian LIDAR to be a Part of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission
NASA today announced that the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx mission was the winner of NASA’s third mission in its New Frontiers Program. It was one of three finalists. Regardless of which mission was going to be selected Canada was participating in all three. Canada’s contribution will be a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) system that the Canadian Space Agency will contract out to …
Read More »Space Shuttle Endeavour Launch Delayed Again
NASA officials announced at 9:15 this morning that the Space Shuttle Endeavour will not launch on Monday and will not announce until Monday when the next possible launch attempt will be.
Read More »Canadian Universities Join Consortium to Answer Fundamental Questions of Cosmology
Seven Canadian universities have joined a U.S. led consortium to build the 25 meter Cerro Chajnantor Atacama Telescope (CCAT) in northern Chile at the site of the highest permanent ground-based telescopes in the world in the hopes of answering some of the fundamental questions of cosmology.
Read More »Space Shuttle Discovery Launches on its Final Mission
At 4:53 p.m. eastern the space shuttle Discovery launched on what is her final mission. It was a launch whose countdown went smoothly until the final few minutes when a range safety command computer malfunctioned, almost postponing the launch a day.
Read More »The Mouse on the Moon – Plan B Enters Google Lunar X Prize
Last Thursday the X Prize Foundation announced the final entries in the Google Lunar X Prize and the lone Canadian entry was submitted and approved just before the deadline. The official roster of entered teams now stands at 29 from four continents. They are vying for a total of $30 million in prizes. To win the teams must send a robot to the Moon and …
Read More »NASA Stardust-NeXT Mission Complete
NASA’s Stardust-NExT mission completed its Valentine’s Day date with a comet with its flyby of comet Tempel 1 on Feb. 14. The spacecraft’s closest approach came at approximately 11:40 p.m. EST on Feb. 14. An imaging sequence of about eight minutes is expected to yield 72 high-resolution images around the time of closest approach for best-resolution coverage of Tempel 1’s nucleus. At the time of …
Read More »Top 5 Awesome Things About the Webb Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the successor to the Hubble’s throne. In order to pick up extremely faint infra-red signals from extremely distant stars and galaxies, the JWST has to be extremely cold. Any noise from the IR radiation of the Sun or Earth would make it impossible to see as far into the past as scientists want to. Thus, the JWST has …
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