Science

The Advanced Plant Experiments on Orbit (APEX-CSA2) white spruce seedlings have sprouted some new shoots! This time-lapse video shows a close-up of the trees in their incubator on board the International Space Station over a six-day period. The new growth appears as light-green and orange buds that unfurl into fresh needles towards the end of the video. The seedlings will continue to grow in space …

You know it’s a quiet mission when the journalists are more focused on milestones than the missile just launched. An hour after the near-flawless dawn flight to space by shuttle Discovery on April 5, the reporters on site talked about this fourth-last flight of the program, that record number of women in space, and the two Japanese meeting face to face for the first time.

The seven-member STS-131 crew headed to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery after its launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at 6:21 a.m. EDT. The liftoff came 45 minutes before sunrise Monday, Apr. 5, and lit up Florida’s Space Coast sky. The STS-131 Commander is Alan Poindexter; Jim Dutton is the Pilot and the Mission Specialists are Rick Mastracchio, Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, …

In today’s Ottawa Citizen article “What does $100 billion buy?” they ask fair questions in “… how valuable this research in space has been, and does having a space station really add prestige, or industrial competence, or an innovative edge to a country?” with respect to how Canada benefits and humanity as a whole. “The space station must impress us on a new level: Treating …

Does visual perception change in the weightless environment? The graduate students of the International Space University believe it does, so they have created the IRIS (Image Reversal in Space) experiment for Canadian astronaut Bob Thirsk to take part in.

Canadian Astronaut Bob Thirsk is a test-subject for the ground-breaking Canadian experiment BISE (Bodies in the Space Environment), which examines how humans distinguish up from down in weightlessness.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada issued the following information for its members. Over the last decade the striking ethereal glow of Green Laser Pointers (GLPs) has become a familiar sight at astronomy education and public outreach (EPO) events, from star parties for beginners to sky-at-night tours around astronomical installations. With the beam of a GLP an astronomy educator can direct an audience unerringly to …

The lower slopes of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea with its volcanic soil and which resembles the surfaces of the moon and Mars will be the location for upcoming field tests of a variety of technology with representation from NASA, the German and Canadian Space Agency and Canadian organizations.