Northern Star: A Series That Tells The Story Of Canada In Space

Over the past two years I’ve been working on a script for a documentary series that will soon be appearing on television in British Columbia and hopefully beyond.

The two-part documentary, Northern Star, tells the story of John S. Plaskett, the Ontario farm boy who grew up to become the founding father of astrophysics in Canada. Plaskett spearheaded the construction of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO) just north of Victoria B.C. that is equipped with a giant telescope that was for a few months in 1918 the largest operating telescope on Earth.

Today the DAO remains a vital centre for astronomy in Canada, with its staff exploring the universe using bigger and newer telescopes located in other parts of the world and in outer space, including the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. Canadians are taking a leading role in space exploration.

The documentary is based on Peter Broughton’s award-winning 2018 biography of Plaskett, also called Northern Star, and narrated by one of Canada’s greatest science communicators, Bob McDonald, the host of CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks.

While preparing the script, I worked with Peter Broughton, Bob McDonald, and Nick Versteeg of DV Productions, a top Canadian documentary producer whose perseverance was the vital ingredient in bringing Plaskett’s life to the screen.

The two episodes feature interviews with astronomers and visits to locations around North America. Plaskett himself is brought to life by Victoria-based actor Roger Carr.

The first episode traces Plaskett’s humble beginnings and the massive effort to build the DAO on Little Saanich Mountain. The second episode explores Plaskett’s ground breaking discovery—the rotation of the Milky Way—and how his work continues to influence space science.

The series also includes interviews with Canadian astronauts David Saint-Jacques, who spent months in space on the International Space Station, and Jeremy Hansen, who is scheduled to travel around the Moon on NASA’s Artemis mission.

Northern Star premieres on CHEK TV, Victoria’s own television station, at 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Friday, June 13, with part two following on Friday, June 20. It will also be available for streaming and on-demand on CHEK+. Hopefully the series will soon appear elsewhere in Canada.

George Harris Jr., 1929-2025

George Harris Jr. (r) at the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station in Australia in 1967 with station director Tom Reid. Hamish Lindsay photo via Colin Mackellar, honeysucklecreek.net

George Harris, Jr, a British engineer who helped establish NASA’s communications network for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, and later did the same for European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), died on April 14, 2025, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, at age 95.

Harris was one of 32 British and Canadian engineers hired by the newly formed NASA in 1959 and 1960 after the Canadian government cancelled the CF-105 Avro Arrow jet interceptor program.

Born on July 5, 1929, in Willenhall, England, Harris attended Wolverhampton Technical College and then apprenticed at the Midlands Electricity Board. After emigrating to Canada in 1954, he joined Avro Canada and worked in flight test on the CF-100 and CF-105 jet interceptor programs until the Arrow was cancelled in 1959.

After a brief stint at North American Aviation in Ohio working on the A3J Vigilante aircraft, he joined NASA's Space Task Group in 1960 and helped set up the worldwide tracking network for Mercury, Gemini and Apollo alongside John D. Hodge and others who had previously worked at Avro Canada.

Hodge, Harris and their colleagues applied their experience with control and systems concepts to the Mercury and Gemini programs, especially NASA’s round-the-world tracking stations in the Manned Space Flight Network. Harris oversaw the testing of the tracking stations with specially instrumented aircraft that simulated Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft passing overhead.

In 1962 when the Space Task Group relocated from Virginia to Houston, Texas, the site of the future Johnson Space Center, Harris moved to the Goddard Space Flight Center, where he worked to prepare the Deep Space Network, the USNS Vanguard communications ship and Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft (ARIA) for Apollo tracking duties. His efforts are also credited with helping make the Honeysuckle Creek station in Australia ready for Apollo.

From 1968 to 1974, Harris worked for the European Space Research Organization, a predecessor of the European Space Agency, as the head of the Engineering and Operations Directorate at ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany. There he helped set up spacecraft operations and served as flight director for satellites such as HEOS-1, HEOS-2 and TD-1A.

In 1975, Harris returned to the United States, working for four years on systems development at the Earth Operations System Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

By the time the Space Shuttle began flying in 1981, Harris was working in the private sector but found himself involved again in human spaceflight when he was responsible for controlling the first Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS), when it was deployed from the shuttle Challenger during the STS-6 mission in 1983. When the Inertial Upper Stage failed to boost TDRS-1 into geosynchronous orbit, Harris led the successful effort to separate TDRS-1 from the balky stage and raise the satellite into geosynchronous orbit. He won the NASA Public Service Medal for his work on TDRS.

Starting in 1985, Harris worked as an aerospace consultant and held several short-term jobs, some of them involving the Ariane launch vehicle, one setting up systems for the United States Information Agency, and another where he served as Executive Director of the New Mexio State Office for Space Commercialization.

In 1997 and 1998, he worked for the Canadian Space Agency as manager of the control facility for Radarsat-1, which had been launched in 1995. His job was to supervise a set of maneuvers to make it possible for Radarsat to map Antarctica, which had not been part of its original mission, and then return it to its normal attitude.

When the Radarsat job was done, he returned home to Las Cruces, New Mexico. There he retired with his second wife Martha, who he had married in 1968 and who died in 2020. With his first wife Mary, Harris had two sons, Kelly and Robert, and a daughter, Sandra.