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A spare robotic hand for Canadarm2 tested at Ottawa's David Florida Laboratory in 2015. The Canadian Space Agency says the lab can run tests ranging from –25 to 60 C. (Canadian Space Agency)The Canadian Space Agency has confirmed a west Ottawa spacecraft laboratory it calls "Canada's national facility for spacecraft assembly  integration" is closing at the end of March 2025.The David Florida Laboratory officially opened in 1972 in the Shirley's Bay complex off Carling Avenue. It's one of the few complexes in the world…

The first private spacecraft to softly land on the moon carries a Canadian instrument that will test the possibility of building an observatory at the Lunar south pole.The phone booth-sized lander by Intuitive Machines, named Odysseus, launched on Feb. 15 and touched down on Thursday near a small impact crater about 300 kilometers from the moon's south pole.It was a stressful event with navigation and communication issues, but 15 nail-biting minutes after it landed, mission control confirmed that they were receiving a…

2023 was a busy year in science. Here are 10 stories worth revisiting as we wind up the year.1. Canadian Jeremy Hansen chosen to fly to the moonA Canadian astronaut was selected as part of the crew for NASA's Artemis II mission to the moon.Jeremy Hansen and three crew mates will fly in an Orion capsule that will orbit the moon and fly farther into deep space than any humans have gone before.Hansen will not land on the moon, but the planned 10-day mission will be the first of a series of missions expected to culminate with…

Thirty years ago, an 11-day space shuttle mission involving seven veteran astronauts performed the first servicing mission to correct the Hubble Space Telescope's blurred vision.The unprecedented flight involved five spacewalks and would not have been possible without the assistance of the shuttle's robotic Canadarm.The multi-billion dollar Hubble Space Telescope was a crown jewel of NASA's space program. At the time, it was the largest and most capable astronomical observatory in orbit, with a clear view of the universe…

A new discover has been…

An international team of scientists has released the largest near-infrared image ever taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, enabling astronomers to map the star-forming regions of the universe and learn how the earliest, most distant galaxies originated.To image an expansive patch of sky, the researchers led by those at the University of Toronto employed a new technique with Hubble known as Drift And SHift (Dash).Dash creates an image that is eight times larger than Hubble's standard field of view by capturing multiple…