US-Arm???

MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) is sold its space missions and satellite business, including the division that built the Canadarm on the space shuttle, to U.S. defence contractor Alliant Techsystems (ATK) for $1.325 billion in cash

so the question is... will the Canadarm become the US-Arm? can they change the name?



The other question is... will the tax payers get back all their money that went into the Canada Arm, Radarsat 1 and Radarsat 2?

RADARSAT-2 is/was our new satellite (Launched only on Dec 14, 2007). It can survey the arctic, report on ice conditions, spot unauthorized shipping and detect oil spills. It was built largely with government money ( $450M of the $525M price tag) and was to be wholly owned by MDA in a typical public-private partnership. It will now be wholly owned by the US parent company.

As the CSA website says "RADARSAT-2 demonstrates the Canadian space community's leadership in developing remote sensing technology and applications. With state-of-the-art technology, it is one of the world's most advanced commercially available Earth observation radar image providers and offers users around the world an expanded range of high-quality data products for hundreds of applications."

guess not only were the images commercially available, but the satellite itself was too... for a billion and some dollars.