It’s been decades since the stars were in the Iron Curtain grip of two nations.

And where the U.S. and former Soviet Union once held a hammer hold on the heavens, a large and expanding group of countries is now slinging people and hardware into space.

In March, 2013, Canadian Chris Hadfield became the first astronaut from this country to command a spacecraft, when he took over top duties aboard the International Space Station for the second half of his five-month stay.

Last December, China’s landing of its Chang’e 3 rover on the lunar surface made it just the third country to make a soft set-down of a vehicle on the moon, and the first to do so since 1976.

And in September India successfully inserted its Mangalyaan satellite into a Martian orbit after launching the experimental and observational craft on its journey late last year.

But the true global scope of space faring was on vivid display at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre last week when the International Astronautical Congress landed for its annual five-day gathering.

The main floor of centre’s south building was divided into pavilions representing more than a dozen countries — large and tiny — and many more international aerospace industries and organizations.

Front and centre was the Canadian pavilion where a large model of the “Next Generation” Canadarm was on display.

Future space missions, whether privately or publicly funded, will likely use spacecraft much smaller than the massive U.S. space shuttles for which the original Canadarms were built, says robotics specialist John Dunlop.

So future arms must be scaled down to fit their more compact rides, but still have the length to be useful, says Dunlop, product director at Brampton’s MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., which designs and builds the appendages.

“When the space craft you’re flying up in is small, small compared to the space shuttle, you want a big arm that fits in a small package,” Dunlop says.

To maintain the long, crane-like capacity of past arms — one of which is still maneuvering around the space station — Dunlop’s team has taken a telescoping approach to their revamped design.

By having segments of the new arms slip inside each other on either side of a central elbow, the devices can expand to three or four times their contracted length when deployed in orbit, he says. A model of the new design was on display.

“It can extend itself and then you can reach further distances on orbit while fitting in a small package,” Dunlop says.

As always, the business end of the arm can be fitted with a variety of mission-specific grasping tools.

Dunlop says the next-generation Canadarms could attach to the “fleets of vehicles” that are expected to ferry and retrieve satellites in the future and that they could also help build and service a deep space habitat that many now envision.

On the opposite side of the convention floor, Sweden was represented by the state-owned Swedish Space Corporation, which has sent up hundreds of suborbital, scientific rockets from its Esrange launch facility north of the Arctic Circle.

Perhaps more interesting than their high tech rocketry, however, is the Swedes’ experimentation with the old technology of ballooning.

The lighter-than-air lift that propels balloons skyward does not seem compelling amidst the sophisticated space gadgetry on display all around the convention floor.

“But you know the Globe Arena?” says corporation spokesperson Annika Benson, referring to the 14,000 seat hockey stadium in Stockholm.

“The balloons are twice the size of the Globe Arena,” Benson says.

The helium filled balloons — more than 550 have been launched — heave telescopes and other sensing and imaging devices 40 kilometres into the upper stratosphere, where the whisper thin air presents little interference to their observations.

The balloons and their payloads will typically sail westward winds over the North Atlantic and land in Canada’s far north, where they are retrieved.

The convention’s British pavilion attracted a steady flow of visitors with its large scale model of proposed a new shuttle craft, tentatively named the Skylon space plane.

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The black, missile-shaped vehicle will eventually carry payloads of 15 tonnes or more into orbit, says Jeremy Nickless, a spokesperson for Reaction Engines, which is developing the Skylon’s propulsion system.

That system will combine rocket and jet technologies that will help the new craft dispense with the large fuel tanks and booster engines that encumbered the U.S. space shuttles and allow it to take off and land from a runway.

“The difference between our engine and a conventional rocket is that a conventional rocket has to carry all of its liquid oxygen (fuel) on board,” Nickless says.

“That represents about two thirds of the (liftoff) weight of the vehicle.”

The Reaction engine, on the other hand, will inhale air as it climbs through the atmosphere, replacing as much stored oxygen as possible.

“So it’s still a rocket engine but it has an air breathing system on the front,” Nickless says.

That air utilization will cut back on carried fuel requirements by 20 per cent, allowing builders to create a much sturdier airframe that can handle the rigours of repeated runway takeoffs.

Nickless says a demonstrator prototype of the engine — known as a SABRE for synergetic air breathing rocket engine — should be up and running in the next four years.

At the Israeli pavilion, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. was displaying a new concept in Earth observation satellite technology.

Rafael programs manager Yaaqov Sharony says his company is developing micro satellites that can orbit in bunches and give nearly constant coverage of emergency, terrorist or military activities on the ground below.

“You can allow yourself to have a constellation of satellites which means you have several satellites in space doing the same job,” Sharony says.

He says the resolution with which a satellite can peer down is tied to its size and weight, with equipment that can spot a proverbial golf ball on a green being much heavier and more expensive to build and launch than lower resolution gear.

He says the Israeli satellites would be compact yet have resolutions good enough to easily spot a fast-moving car below and that the system of multiple satellites would be better able to follow the action.

“If the changes on the ground are rapid and you need to monitor the same site every hour, every two hours, then you need the constellation,” Sharony says.

Three of his 100-kilogram satellites could be launched for the price of one larger high resolution orbiter, he anticipates.

And they could line up in bunches of six to 12 following satellites, depending on customer needs.

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