Gordon Osinski, director of Western’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration (Western Space), is available to media for comment about today’s announcement that the Canadian Space Agency has signed an agreement with NASA, which provides two crew opportunities for...
Gordon Osinski
Planetary scientist available to comment on NASA’s discovery of surface water on Moon
NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) confirmed today – for the first time ever – water on the sunlit surface of the Moon. This discovery indicates that water may be distributed across the lunar surface, and not limited to cold, shadowed...
Did meteorite impacts help create life on Earth and beyond?
What if impact craters, long seen as harbingers of death, turned out to be the cradle of life? For Western University planetary scientist Gordon Osinski, this isn’t just the big question posed in his latest study, but an overriding theme of his celebrated academic...
Early Mars was covered in ice sheets, not flowing rivers
A large number of the valley networks scarring Mars’ surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice, not by free-flowing rivers as previously thought, according to a new study by Western and University of British Columbia researchers. The findings...
Western to officially launch Institute for Earth and Space Exploration
Western University’s new Institute for Earth and Space Exploration (Western Space) works towards two long-term objectives: Launching Western into Space and Bringing Space Down to Earth. At a special event on Monday, October 7, faculty, staff and students leading...
Western’s first steps in getting Canada to the Moon
In February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada is joining the international effort to explore the Moon with robots and, eventually, humans. In order to prepare for these future missions, a team of Western University faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate...
Nearly one year later, Western students recover prized project from space
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzlr3CszzGM One year ago today, a team of Western University graduate students launched a high-altitude balloon (HAB) 20 km into space with the lofty goal of studying the Earth’s stratosphere to get a better sense of what microbial life...
Western welcomes CSA astronaut Dave Williams for Space Day
This week, astronaut David Saint-Jacques became the fourth Canadian to complete a spacewalk. Today, scientists from the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration presented the first-ever image of a black hole to a global audience. Space, literally and figuratively, is all...
Western’s CPSX supports new space mission led by CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques
While in space, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut David Saint-Jacques is using his vantage point from aboard the International Space Station to explore Earth. Saint-Jacques is observing our planet to better understand its geological, environmental and ecological...
Western planetary scientists assist in capturing first full-colour image of NASA InSight using HiRISE space camera
Houston, there is no problem here. Eric Pilles assisted in capturing – for the first-time ever – extraordinary and highly significant scientific images of the NASA InSight robotic lander using HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment), the camera currently...
Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration wins PromoScience Award for Space Matters
Although many people are fascinated by space, most Canadians are relatively unaware of how space technologies pervade their everyday life. From GPS and satellite communications to weather forecasting and monitoring the health of crops or the extent of sea ice, the...
Record-setting spacewalker Dave Williams headlines Space Day @ Western
For 17 hours and 47 minutes, which is longer than it would take to binge watch the entire first season of Star Trek: Discovery, astronaut Dave Williams spacewalked outside the International Space Station in 2007 establishing an interstellar Canadian record. More than...