{"id":63378,"date":"2019-04-18T18:00:01","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T22:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=63378"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:37:30","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:37:30","slug":"canada-lunar-exploration-strategy","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/canada-lunar-exploration-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada\u2019s approach to lunar exploration needs to be strategic or we\u2019ll be left behind"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Canada\u2019s approach to lunar exploration needs to be strategic or we\u2019ll be left behind\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

Should Canada go to the moon? What\u2019s there for Canadians? It is these questions that we should ponder when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced that Canada will be participating in the new space exploration vision<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a professor of space robotics at a Canadian university, I should welcome this news, but I am not so sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States Lunar Gateway<\/a> is an incremental progression from the International Space Station<\/a> (ISS) that has dominated American (and Canadian) human spaceflight for the past few decades. Of course, the history of the ISS has been mired in controversy<\/a> \u2014 it was expensive, purposeless, took decades to design, re-design and finally build. It has neither yielded any great scientific advances nor has it advanced human Mars exploration as originally proposed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canada in space<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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Canada\u2019s role on the ISS was to supply a suite of robot arms, including Canadarm 2<\/a>. They were paid for by the Canadian taxpayer to a single Canadian company, MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) Ltd. In turn, we obtained seats on the ISS for our Canadian astronaut corps, including Col. Chris Hadfield<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no doubt that Hadfield, our own star-faring troubadour, and his Canadian astronaut colleagues have done much to raise awareness of Canada\u2019s participation in the human space program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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