This Week in Space for Canada

While Com Dev International slowly builds its government satellite business, the James Webb Space Telescope gains the reputation of being a “a giant money sponge.” Meanwhile, our own CBC Mother Corp prefers to ignore real space in favour of suborbital stories from long dormant “coulda been” contenders. Brother can you spare a dime to grow my ratings, this week in space for Canada.

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Canadian Space Summit Takes Shape

The Canadian Space Summit is being held in Ottawa between November 19th through the 20th. It is an annual gathering of industry, academia, government, non-profit organizations, students and enthusiasts. This year’s theme is “2010: A Canadian Space Odyssey”. With over 35 speakers, an exhibit area and a free Friday night public discussion titled “Meet Canada’s Space Industry” hosted by the CBC’s Johanna Wagstaffe, it’s sure …

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This Week in Space for Canada

Federal Industry Minister Tony Clement wishes RADARSAT 1 a happy 15th birthday while opposition MP’s start thinking that it might be time to reassess Canadian space policy and Macdonald Dettwiler (MDA) shows the way forward by meeting current RADARSAT milestones and selling off their entire property data unit (even though they sorta said they kinda wouldn’t). All that and more, this week in space for …

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This Week in Space for Canada

The Hill Times talks about adjusting to space policy changes in the US after Canadian space stimulus money runs out and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) allows Toronto based Engineering Services Inc. (ESI) to keep the intellectual property developed from CSA contracts but the Vancouver based Mohammad Institute for Space Science out does everyone by announcing a Moon based laboratory scheduled for deployment by 2015. …

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The Space Shuttle Retirement and the Avro Analogy

Last Thursday NASA held a series of media briefings for the upcoming launch on November 1st of the Space Shuttle Discovery, its 39th and final flight. After this launch there is only one scheduled launch left, tentatively set for late February. There may be an additional flight in June or next fall but not all of the funding has been appropriated. As the Shuttle program …

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This Week in Space for Canada

European Space Agency (ESA) member countries (including Canada) band together in Brussels to plot strategy while commercial newspace movers and shakers descend upon New Mexico to book billets on Space Ship 2. Canadian space entrepreneur Bob Richards forms a new team to (evidently) compete against his old team for the Google Lunar X Prize and Telesat takes the chance of including an x-band payload in …

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An Overview of the Canadian Space Agency Exploration Core Program

Jean-Claude Piedboeuf of the CSA provides an Exploration Core Program as of 2010

At the recent 61st International Astronautical Congress in Prague, Jean-Claude Piedboeuf, Head of Exploration Planning at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), provided an overview of Canada’s preparatory exploration activities. While Canada has been involved in exploration activities for 25 years with its contributions in robotics, science and astronaut core, it wasn’t until 2007 that the CSA created the Exploration Core Program to unify the activities …

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