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           By  Chuck Black Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced that Canada will become the first international partner to join the US led  Lunar Gateway program , a plan promoted and managed by NASA but expected to be partially funded by multinational contributions from countries such as Canada. Trudeau's announcement is the first formal statement of commitment to the program from another nation. The NASA Lunar Gateway is intended to serve as a follow-on program to the current International Space Station (ISS) and will serve as a stepping stone for NASA's deep space exploration plans. NASA's newest best friend. Canadian PM Trudeau explaining that " Canada is stepping up " to build another Canadarm for the US Lunar Gateway and also contribute in other ways. According to Trudeau, the new Canadarm " that will repair and maintain the Lunar Gateway " will be " built in Canada by Canadians ," although he didn't say which domestic (or for...

           By  Brian Orlotti European researchers have announced that they have succeeded in carving out graphene to nanoscale dimensions without ruining its electrical properties; a key step towards making practical graphene nano-electronics. As outlined in the February 19th, 2019 NanoWerk post, " Graphene 'sandwich' key to new electronics ," the researchers were operating under the European Union (EU) Graphene Flagship program , a €1 billion EUR ($1.5Bln CDN) initiative launched in 2013 to bring together academic and industrial researchers with a plan to commercialize graphene. Graphene, first discovered in 2004, is a form of carbon made up of hexagonal atoms that is only a single-atom thick. Graphene’s unique structure gives it remarkable properties: it is over 100 times stronger than steel, a better electrical conductor than copper, transparent, flexible, and impermeable to most gasses and liquids. Recent research has even shown the possibility of...

           By  Chuck Black Both the United States, with its " Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 ," and the Grand Duchy of Luxemboug  are well known for recent legislation allowing their citizens and domestically based corporations to claim ownership over space based resources. Mars (on the left) has more than a little in common with the Australian outback (on the right) according to the December 4th, 2014 ABC News Australia post, " Mars V Australian Outback ." As outlined in the June 10th, 2018 VentureBeat post, " The best countries for tech companies: 2018 rankings ," the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) has named Australia, Singapore and Sweden as " the countries most prepared for technological change, and the most attractive places for tech companies to invest in the next five years ." It's a shame that Canada wasn't in the top ten rankings. Photo's c/o NASA and Jane Stapleton . Those laws are designed specifical...

           By  Chuck Black The 2019 Canadian Federal Budget (expected to be tabled in the Canadian House of Commons on March 19th, 2019), along with the fourth quarter 2018 report (expected on February 28th, 2019) and the year-end stockholder meeting (currently scheduled for May 8th, 2019) of Westminster CO based Maxar Technologies , are currently the hottest topics of gossip among those who focus on the Canadian space industry. How did that happen? It's because Brampton ON based MDA is both the maker of Canada's iconic Canadarm and a Maxar subsidiary. Since the formation of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in 1989, the space industry in Canada has been wrapped around Federal government funding for its favorite contractor. This state of affairs is in the midst of changing. But change comes slowly to the industry and many are hoping that change will be delayed or superseded by announcements deriving from one or more of those events. As outlin...

           By Henry Stewart It's not going to make an immediate difference, if only because the room will contain far to many of the " usual suspects " of the Canadian space industry. They'd mostly prefer to pine over a quieter past when space was properly managed and fully funded by the appropriate government agency working through a trustworthy prime contractor. It's also a little late to the party, given all the other events around the world over the last five years which have been focused around much the same topic. Be that as it may, the 2019 InvestmentSpace Conference, sponsored by the  Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), the Toronto ON based Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) and the Ontario Center of Excellence (OCE), is gearing up for a full day of presentations at the St-Regis Hotel in Toronto, Ontario on Friday, February 22nd. As outlined on the February 18th, 2019 CSA  website devoted to th...

           By  Chuck Black According to Mountain View CA based Flawless Photonics President and CEO Chandra (CK) Singla, the real future of manufacturing in space could begin with a small automated, fiber optic fabrication laboratory (the " Fab Lab ") currently scheduled to launch in April, 2019 with the next SpaceX Falcon-9 resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The December 2018 cover of " Upward Magazine ," the official publication of the ISS National Lab explored the increasing efforts to manufacture exotic fiber optics in a micro-gravity environment in the article " Exotic Glass Fibers from Space. The Race to Manufacture ZBLAN ." Graphic c/o Upward Magazine . Singla is currently working with co-founder Rob Loughan, plus a small team of material science, optical fiber and micro-gravity experts to bring a new generation of innovation and creativity to the final frontier. He spoke about the upcoming mission, and about why...

           By  Brian Orlotti A NASA team has received a $2Mln US ($2.65Mln CDN) grant to develop a 3D-printed nanomaterial-based sensor platform. The small, low-power, high sensitivity platform could greatly enhance space exploration efforts. The team, headed by technologist Mahmooda Sultana and located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, will spend the next two years developing the platform. The platform will be capable of sensing a wide variety of data such as minute concentrations of gases, atmospheric pressure and temperature, then transmitting them wirelessly from a self-contained platform measuring just two-by-three-inches. Such tiny platforms could be deployed on planetary rovers to detect small quantities of water and methane or serve as biological sensors to monitor astronauts’ health. Key to the effort is a 3D printing system developed by Ahmed Busnina and his group at Northeastern University in Boston. The 3D printing system...

           By  Chuck Black European Union (EU) negotiators have agreed to the wording of Articles 11 and 13 of the infamous EU  Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market , known more commonly as the EU copyright directive. As outlined in the February 13th, 2019 IPPro Magazine post, " EU copyright directive: article 11 and 13 text agreed ," the final vote on whether to implement the directives could occur as soon as March 25th - 27th. As noted in this blog, most recently in the August 20th, 2018 post, " Breaking for Vacation and to Research Issues Relating to Online Press Freedom: Back on September 4th, " the legislation will have a substantial effect on freedom of speech on the internet, news coverage in general and the ability to link directly to primary source material for news and commentary. The BBC has weighed in on the EU copyright directive with its February 13th, 2019 post, " What is Article 13? The EU's copyright dire...

Part 5: The Current Liberal Government            By  Chuck Black This series of posts is attempting to answer some of the questions surrounding the appropriate Canadian response to the recently announced US plan to create an expanded  United States Space Force .   Part one (" The Axworthy Doctrine ") focused on how the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990's led to a new Canadian focus on aggressive, international peacekeeping missions requiring space focused communication and surveillance capabilities of a type which Canada didn't then possess. Part two (" The Changing Political Landscape ") discussed why Canada never had a military space policy prior to 1998 by going back to the 1960's and the federal liberal party under  Lester Pearson  and  Pierre Trudeau .   Part three (" Towards Northern Sovereignty ") dealt with the changing focus of Canadian foreign policy from international peacekeeping towards northe...

           By Henry Stewart Sometime this week, the Canadian government is expected to release a 100-page report titled " Building a Nation of Innovators ." The report is intended to highlight the various policies, programs, plans and funding mechanisms the Federal department of  Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) has undertaken since 2015 in order to embrace innovative methodologies, digital technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. But it probably won't mention anything about Canada's space industry, which is a shame since the space industry is one of the drivers of innovation in the Canadian economy. As outlined in the February 9th, 2019 Financial Post article, " The race to future-proof the economy: Navdeep Bains on the state of innovation in Canada ," Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains is already providing a sneak peak at the contents of the report. According to Bains: ...it’s a report card, because people ...

           By  Chuck Black The plan always seemed more akin to the plot of the 1967 Mel Brooks movie " The Producers ," which focused on the down-on-his-luck producer Max Bialystock (played by Zero Mostel ), who teamed up with a timid accountant ( Gene Wilder ) in a get-rich-quick scheme to put on the world's worst show and make off with the production funds. Be that as it may,  Mars One Ventures AG , the commercial arm of the Mars One effort to colonize the red planet, was liquidated on January 15th, 2019 in a case heard in the Swiss canton of Basel-Stadt, according to a January 16th, 2019 filing ( #CHE-375.837.130 ) by the canton’s commercial register.  As outlined in the February 11th, 2019 Space News post, " Mars One company goes bankrupt ," the filing was first publicized February 10th, 2019 on Reddit . According to the Space News post, " the filing offered little information about the bankruptcy case or how the company was liquidated. ...

           By  Chuck Black The Washington DC based Wilson Center , the US think-tank which organized the September 7th, 2018 event " Over the Horizon: A New Era for Canada-US Space Cooperation? " which included many US and Canadian senior space focused bureaucrats, has published a February 2019 White Paper on " The Potential for a US-Canadian Spacefaring Partnership: Canada’s Role in The US Return to Space Leadership ." The front cover of the twenty-one page February 2019 Wilson Center position paper on " The Potential for a US-Canadian Spacefaring Partnership: Canada’s Role in The US Return to Space Leadership ." Graphic c/o Wilson Center . As outlined in the position paper: Canada has a well-developed partnership with NASA that supports space science and exploration, but the changes in US priorities for NASA will require a recalibration of this partnership and open new opportunities for the CSA. Canada’s small but highly regarded commercial space sec...

           By Henry Stewart Maybe things are starting to look up for Canada's space industry. Sometime this month, Charlottesville NC based Honeywell International , will formally open its Space Division’s Greenhouse, a technology and space focused incubator in a facility originally owned by the old Cambridge ON based COM DEV International . Of course, the Honeywell Greenhouse has unofficially been opened for almost a year. It's been publically referenced as far back as the August 22nd, 2018 Space News post, " Small satellites are at the center of a space industry transformation " and many of its core staff have held their formal titles since June 2018. Before then, most worked for COM DEV and focused on doing pretty much what they had been doing since Honeywell brought the iconic Canadian space company and spun out its Cambridge ON based exactEarth smallsat subsidiary as a separate company in late 2015. But a formal announcement, as outlined in the J...