SpaceQ Space news and analysis.

NASA’s Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the “habitable zone,” the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count.

The latest edition of Space Quarterly magazine is available. In this issue we’re focusing on space policy along with updates on Canada’s rover program, one of Canada’s next satellites to be launched, NEOSSat and COM DEV’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) satellite constellation. In our new Leaders section we interview Futron founder and CEO Joe Fuller who tells us about why he started his company and …

The government announced today after holding a roundtable discussion in Charlottetown, that further pre-budget consultations with business, academic and sectoral leaders will take place in the New Year at venues across the country, details of which are still forthcoming.

ABB Canada will provide key technologies in the development of an instrument to be used to make meteorological observations onboard satellites for the Canadian Space Agency’s Polar Communications and Weather (PCW) mission.

At 10:02 a.m. Eastern time on a beautiful fall day a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), otherwise known as the Mars Curiosity rover, was launched on its nine month journey to Mars. On board is a Canadian contribution in the form of the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument.

A Request For Proposal (RFP) was released this week by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) that will result in the display of the Canadian-built Canadarm which flew on the space shuttle Endeavour at its headquarters in St Hubert Qubec.

The following is an excerpt from an article that appears in the next issue of Space Quarterly Magazine to be released on December 1. Following the excerpt is the table of contents for both the Canadian and U.S. editions. Moon, Mars or Bust, Canada’s Space Sector at a Crossroads Again A little over three years ago Jim Prentice, then the Minister of Industry, named Dr. …

Expedition 29 Soyuz Commander Anton Shkaplerov, NASA Flight Engineer Dan Burbank and Russian Flight Engineer Anatoly Ivanishin launched on the Russian Soyuz TMA-22 spacecraft on November 14, 2011, (November 13 in the United States) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to begin a two-day journey to the International Space Station.

Expedition 29 has been given the green light for launch today at 11:13 p.m. EST to the International Space Station. Onboard the Soyuz spacecraft will be Commander Anton Shkaplerov, NASA Flight Engineer Dan Burbank and Russian Flight Engineer Anatoly Ivanishin.

Thirty years ago this month, Canada’s contribution to the US manned spaceflight program flew on its first mission. The (Space) Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS) flew on the second space shuttle mission, STS-2 and was tested on the second day of the flight – November 13, 1981