The Canadian Space Program: From Black
Brant to the International Space Station
By Andrew B. Godefroy
Springer Praxis Books: 2017
ISBN: 978-3-319-40104-1
Until
Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield lit up social media during his time as
Commander of the International Space Station in 2013, many people and even some
Canadians did not know there was such a thing as a Canadian space program.
In
reality, Canada’s space activities go back many years and feature many colorful
and sometimes controversial events, including leadership in establishing communications
satellite technologies and the most serious attempt so far to use cannons as a
means of launching satellites.
Andrew
Godefroy, a military analyst and historian based at the Canadian Defence
Academy in Kingston, Ontario, established himself as the leading historian of
Canada’s space program with his 2011 book, Defence & Discovery: Canada's Military Space Program, 1945-1974 (UBC Press), which outlined
the military roots of Canada’s space activities.
Now Godefroy has
written the most comprehensive history of Canada’s space program, going back as
far as the early studies and agencies that began during World War I and
expanded in the years that followed. Following World War II, Canadian
physicists associated with the Department of National Defence worked to better
understand the ionosphere and its impact on radio communications in Canada’s
north.
This scientific work
led to Canada’s first satellite, Alouette, which NASA launched in 1962 to add
to our knowledge of the ionosphere, and it was followed by a second Alouette
satellite and two satellites in the International Satellites for Ionospheric
Studies (ISIS) program.
Other defense programs
led to the creation of the Black Brant sounding rocket, which was later
successfully commercialized, and to the short-lived attempt to turn a cannon
into a space launcher.
In the 1960s, the
Canadian government’s main interest in space turned to communications
satellites, and while Canadian space efforts were fragmented under different
departments and agencies, John H. Chapman, a physicist with a background in
defense work, assumed leadership of Canada’s evolving space program. Godefroy’s
treatment of these early years of Canadian space exploration is the centrepiece
of the book.
While the Canadian
government turned the development of Canada’s communication satellite
infrastructure over to Telesat Canada and the private sector in the 1970s,
Godefroy’s account of this time emphasizes the Canadian government’s actions
that led to Canada’s participation in the U.S. Space Shuttle Program. Starting
with the development of the Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System or
Canadarm.
The Canadian Space
Program then chronicles the events that led to the creation of the Canadian
Astronaut Program in 1983, and then the long awaited establishment of the
Canadian Space Agency in 1989.
Starting with Marc
Garneau in 1984, eight Canadian astronauts flew into space during the life of the Space
Shuttle program, six of them more than once. Godefroy’s book covers these
flights through Julie Payette’s second shuttle flight to the International
Space Station in 2009, which coincided with Robert Thirsk’s first Canadian long
duration mission on the ISS. Canada earned its way into the ISS with its
contribution of the Mobile Servicing System, an advanced version of the
Canadarm.
This book explains how
Canadian government policy directed and sometimes hindered Canada’s many space
accomplishments, many of which depended on cooperation with the United States
and other spacefaring nations.
Godefroy acknowledges
that “there is much to be learned about the history of Canada’s space program,”
and he calls this book a first step that he hopes will be followed by others on
this topic. As someone who follows Canadian space history, I hope that some of
those books will come from Godefroy himself.
