'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
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."
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.