The New York Times reported that Canada secured astronaut Jeremy Hansen’s seat on NASA’s Artemis II lunar mission by negotiating a deal to provide Canadarm3 to Gateway, a planned US lunar space station, and that Hansen’s flight makes Canada only the second country after the US to send an astronaut so deep into space.
Yet the sector remains underfunded relative to peers.
The Times, citing a Royal Bank of Canada report, said Canada’s annual space budget is about $834m, last among 10 OECD Space Forum countries when measured as a share of GDP.
The paper reported that in 2018 about 70 Canadian aerospace firms, universities and industry groups banded together to lobby Ottawa for more funding and urged the country not to “rest on the laurels” of past achievements such as being among the first states, outside the US and Soviet Union, to operate its own satellites.