Congrats to Canada!

[yukionna]

I was looking at Discovery photos today and noticed the Canada logo on Discovery's robotic arm. I don't know the history behind Canada's involvement in the shuttle mission but its great to have your involvement!

[myboyburt]

I follow the Space program so I know a little bit of the history of Canada's involvement with the Space Shutte.

The first deployment of the CanadaArm in Space was from the Columbia in 1981.

In 1993 the CanadaArm was used to grab the Hubble Space Telescope from it's orbit and place it in the cargo bay of the Space Shuttle Endeavour for repairs. It was then used to release the Hubble back into Space once the repairs were done. I remember this like it was yesterday!

The Canadian Space Agency also deployed the CanadaArm2 on the International Space Station, I believe they did this sometime in 2001. It was brought up by one of the Space Shuttles, I just don't remember which one.

And for the latest Space Shuttle mission the folks at the Canadian Space Agency worked with Nasa to redesign the CanadaArm to be used to do sweeps of the craft using cameras to check for damage.

A big THANK YOU to our friends to the north for your support of the Space Shuttle program and the International Space Station.

[Road Ruler]

We are proud of our contribution to the US space program but it is not limited to the Canada Arm.

It is also worth noting that back in the 50's the narrow minded, short sighted, small thinking, Canadian Conservative government ( led by Diefenbacker) pulled the plug on Avro's famous Arrow project. The Arrow was a state of the art, supersonic jet interceptor that was designed and built in Toronto, Canada. When the project was canned in 1958, Nasa asked Avro's chief designer Jim Chamberlain to come to Nasa and help them get their space program off the ground.

Jim Chamberlin ( from BC Canada) was named Head of Nasa Engineering Division and with a team of 33 former Avro Engineers, helped spearhead the Gemini, and the Apollo Space programs to the moon.

Note... The American F-18 presently one of the most advanced aircraft still falls short of the performance levels expected of Arrow #206, in 1959.

http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-75-275/...gy/avro_arrow/

[DavidsonOverlander]

NASA 's head of Robotics is a Canadian, Col Chris Hadfield. He's from Milton, ON (where I live). The school where I teach is Chris Hadfield Public School. I've met Chris several times and he's a really great guy. He did an amazing job when he spoke to the students at the official opening of the school.

[Canuks]

Yes, I'm really glad that it came in handy this time around!
I hear that my Canadian government will be soon setting up Canadarms at every gas pump to directly remove the tax money from our wallets.

[myboyburt]

Not the tax part, the CanadaArm part.