Tag Archives: Launch Capability

It’s that time of year again where we look back at the top Canadian space stories of the year. To say that 2020 was a remarkable year would be an understatement. The year started out full of promise and optimism, but was quickly overshadowed by the pandemic.

The Government of Canada has made the decision that it wants to be a launching state. The day that rockets carrying satellites to orbit and beyond from Canadian soil is now closer than its ever been.

Canada has never launched an orbital rocket. SpaceHorizon wants to change that, and it knows it faces an uphill battle to make the dream a reality.

While the space community waits for the government to release a new space strategy, the real work behind the scenes to make that happen is proceeding at a larger scale than the public is aware of.

During the Fireside Chat with the CBC’s Bob McDonald and the U.S. State Department’s Kenneth Hodgkins, one of the surprising topics discussed was that of Canada becoming an emerging launching state.

In the last week and half there’s been an ongoing discussion as to whether Canada needs and should develop an indigenous orbital rocket launch capability. That’s the topic of this weeks podcast.

The SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch this week has ignited a debate within Canada as to whether we need our own launch capability. The government policy currently is that we don’t need the capability. Is it time to revisit or modify that policy to take into account commercial efforts?

With the launch this week of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy and the discussion in the media about Canada’s lack of launch capability, we thought we would publish a couple of articles from the Space Quarterly print magazine archives that have never been published online. This second article was published in September 2012 and is written by journalist Elizabeth Howell.

With the launch this week of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy and the discussion in the media about Canada’s lack of launch capability, we thought we would publish a couple of articles from the Space Quarterly print magazine archives that have never been published online. The first was published in June 2012 and is written by Canadian journalist and historian Chris Gainor.

It might come as a surprise to most Canadians but Canada has never launched a rocket into orbit. Sure we were the third country in the world to build our own satellite, the Alouette, but it was launched by the U.S. on an American rocket. Sure we’ve sent astronauts into space, built the Canadarm, Canadarm2, Dextre, have satellites in orbit and even sent instruments to …