An El Nino-less summer is coming. Here's what that could mean for Canada
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Officials at NASA have signed a Space Act Agreement with SpaceX to investigate the benefits and risks of having a private mission provide service to NASA's nearly 33-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, boosting it to a higher orbit to extend its life, the space agency announced Thursday.
"Hubble is amazingly successful. ... It's doing great science as we speak," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, during a news conference.
But SpaceX approached the space agency a few months ago with the idea, he said, and the team at NASA is now planning to assess how a private mission might help "boost" and maintain the telescope.
Zurbuchen added that it is not yet certain whether or not such a mission could be carried out, and the goal of the agreement is just to explore the technical feasibility of the idea.
Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer operations and integration at SpaceX, said the private aerospace company "has a lot of experience docking (spacecraft) with the International Space Station."
SpaceX wants to use that knowledge as a foundation and find out whether it's possible to carry out a similar docking maneuver with the Hubble telescope, Jensen said.
It could be done at "no cost to the government," according to a NASA news release. The Space Act Agreement itself will not involve any exchange of funds, according to the release.
Launched in 1990, the space observatory has had several servicing missions during NASA's space shuttle era, with the last mission carried out in 2009. But the space agency retired the space shuttle in 2011, and no spacecraft has been back since.
SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft missions have already taken over much of the work that the space shuttle program used to carry out, including ferrying astronauts to and from the ISS.
The effort to send a private mission to Hubble could be a part of a previously announced, privately funded SpaceX program called Polaris. That program is the brainchild of Jared Isaacman, the billionaire CEO of payments platform Shift4, who first gained international attention when he paid the company to take himself and three guests on a three-day trip to orbit Earth aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule last year.
He announced the Polaris program in February, and at the time he said the program would encompass at least three missions with SpaceX.
The first flight in the program, called Polaris Dawn, is expected to last up to five days. It will include a crew of Isaacman and three other people, who will ride aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the Van Allen radiation belt, which has an inner band that stretches from about 400 to 6,000 miles (644 to 9,656 kilometres) above Earth. It's scheduled to take off no earlier than March 2023.
The second Polaris mission could be a great candidate for sending a SpaceX capsule to Hubble, Isaacman said at Thursday's news conference.
It's not yet clear whether an autonomous, uncrewed spacecraft could carry out a Hubble service mission instead of requiring a crew on board, according to Jensen.
Zurbuchen added that is all part of what SpaceX and NASA will explore as part of this Space Act Agreement.
"We're looking at crazy ideas all the time," he said. "That's what we're supposed to do."
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Canada Post is increasing stamp prices for the third time since 2019, a move the Crown corporation says is a "reality" of its sales-based revenue structure.
The federal New Democrats are calling out Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and his party for trying to block the bill that could pave the way for millions of Canadians to access birth control and diabetes coverage.
Defence lawyers of Jeremy Skibicki have admitted in court the accused killed four Indigenous women, but argues he is not criminally responsible for the deaths by way of mental disorder – this latest development has triggered a judge-alone trial rather than a jury trial.
A daily spoonful of olive oil could lower your risk of dying from dementia, according to a new study by Harvard scientists.
An Ontario MPP was asked again to leave the Ontario legislature on Monday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that was banned by the Speaker last month due to its political symbolism.
H5N1 or avian flu is decimating wildlife around the world and is now spreading among cattle in the United States, sparking concerns about 'pandemic potential' for humans. Now a health expert is urging Canada to scale up surveillance north of the border.
Democratic Institutions Minister Dominic LeBlanc will be tabling legislation on Monday aimed at countering foreign interference in Canada. Federal officials have scheduled a technical briefing on the incoming bill for Monday afternoon.
Polish prosecutors have discontinued an investigation into human skeletons found at a site where German dictator Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders spent time during the Second World War because the advanced state of decay made it impossible to determine the cause of death, a spokesman said Monday.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.