Kristen Villebrun and Wendy Bush hoped they wouldn't have to pray for Chedoke Creek, but four years after they first raised alarm about the water's condition, they were part of an Indigenous full moon ceremony to do just that. About 50 people showed up near Princess Point on the dark and frigid Monday evening for the monthly ceremony, which was particularly special as it focused on Chedoke Creek. The body of water that runs into Cootes Paradise had about 24 billion litres of sewage and storm water runoff leak into it due to a gate being left open.
Fifty years ago this month was the last time humans walked on the surface of the moon, during the Apollo 17 mission. NASA recently took the first major step in returning humans to the moon with the Artemis I mission. Orion is an exploration spacecraft used in the Artemis I mission and is the most powerful rocket ever built. On Dec. 11, the uncrewed spacecraft returned to Earth after 25.5 days in space. With this mission, Canada is poised to embark on a new era of lunar exploration.
Located in Bolton, Ont., Canadensys Aerospace is starting to engineer and build the rover to explore the moon for water ice as part of an international mission that’s been ongoing for decades. One of the payloads, provided by Bubble Technology Industries from Chalk River, Ont., can detect iron and calcium and the presence of hydrogen that can help scientists locate water ice. Besides building the rover, Canadensys will create three payloads: a Lyman-Alpha Imager to identify surface water ice, a Multi-Spectral Imager to identify minerals on the moon, and an MSI-Macro to collect similar data through mineralogy but with a higher resolution. Radiation will be measured with a device from Teledyne DALSA, a Waterloo, Ont. company. "We've got two objectives really," Sallaberger said. "The engineering side… preparing for eventually larger rovers and human missions. But on the scientific side, the main goal is looking for water." For humans to live long-term on the moon, there needs to be a sustainable water source. Sallaberger says the moon's south pole is likely to have water ice in the shadowed craters.
