SpaceQ Space news and analysis.

Canadians will once again be at the forefront of the ongoing exploration of Mars as it was announced yesterday by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) that they would be contributing to ExoMars mission. Canada’s contribution will be the shared development with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the Mars Atmospheric Trace Molecule Occultation Spectrometer (MATMOS) instrument onboard the …

Thank goodness we’re not the American’s because US space competitiveness has eroded in each of the past three years according to the Futron Space Competitiveness Index, which considers Russia the big winner in space because of its recently doubled space budget and focus on monetizing national space investments but which also concedes that Europe, Japan, China and India are also expanding their activities. So how …

India launches a Norwegian micro-satellite built by a Canadian university without any help from the American space program, which insists that it’s “not dead yet” as the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee “unanimously” approves legislation adding an extra shuttle mission and development funds for their proposed heavy-lift rocket while the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) just might possibly have said something if it wasn’t …

The Automatic Identification System Satellite 1 (AISSat-1) built by the Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) was successfully launched on July 12th onboard the Indian PSLV-C15 rocket. The satellite was part of the 6th launch of the Nanosatellite Launch Service (NLS-6) which also included the Swiss TIsat-1 satellite.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) recently held its annual general assembly in Fredericton between July 1-4. One key event at the general assembly was an open forum and panel discussion titled “Boldly Navigating Where no one has Gone Before: The Future of the RASC in the 21st Century. The panel discussion was recorded for the Starizona’s Let’s Talk Stars radio programme hosted by …

From researcher Dale Andersen: “During the PLRP field season of 2009, Dr. Ian Hawes and I made several night dives. Here you can see Ian exploring the microbialites, searching for grazers such as amphipods and snails that might have an impact upon the overall growth and morphology of the structures. The underwater video was taken with my Sony PMW-EX1 in a Gates Housing using a …

You won’t find an official Canadian Space Agency (CSA) account on Twitter or any other social media network either, unless you count a rarely updated YouTube account. That does not mean you won’t the CSA mentioned on social media sites like Twitter on a daily basis. And if you’re familiar with Twitter you know that topics can be organized by including a hash tag with …

The wheels and suspension system have been installed on NASA’s next Mars rover, Curiosity, a key step in assembly and testing of the flight system for the Mars Science Laboratory mission slated to launch next year. The centerpiece of MSL, Curiosity has six wheels and a rocker-bogie suspension system like its smaller predecessors: Spirit, Opportunity and Sojourner. Each wheel has its own drive motor and …