Universe Today - October 2, 2001

After a delay of a few days thanks to a solar flare, NASA successfully launched a Lockheed Martin Athena 1 from their launch facility on Kodiak Island, Alaska on Sunday morning at 0240 GMT (10:40pm EDT). Dubbed Kodiak Star, the rocket was carrying 4 microsatellites; three for the Defense Department, and one student project called Starshine - it's a ball covered in polished aluminum mirrors which will be tracked by students around the world.

A new instrument at the Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii's Maunu Kea has helped take an incredible photograph of spiral galaxy M74, showing star clusters, gas clouds and dust lanes. The newly delivered Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) is able to record the spectra of hundreds of objects in one image - a feature that will be useful in many branches of astronomy.

The Canadian Government announced this week that astronaut Marc Garneau has been selected as the next President of the Canadian Space Agency, effective November 22, 2001. Dr. Garneau was the first Canadian to fly in space, and has since flown on the space shuttle three times: STS-41 (1984), STS-77 (1996) and STS-97 (2000). Garneau replaces Mac Evans, who was President for the past seven years and is now retiring from the Public Service of Canada.