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An Apple store in New York, on Oct. 16, 2019. MIKE SEGAR/Reuters As Canada’s top telecommunications companies face pressure to ensure Canadians can reach emergency responders in the event of a major outage, Apple AAPL-Q is rolling out a new service that will accomplish just that. The Cupertino, Calif., tech giant says its new Emergency SOS system, available on iPhone 14 devices in Canada this week, will help people without cellular or Wi-Fi service connect to a satellite to report an emergency or call for help in even the most remote locations. “There are always places that you will never be able to fully cover with cell towers like national parks or rural areas, and so when there is an emergency it becomes a problem very fast,” said Maxime Veron, Apple’s director of iPhone product marketing. “Imagine that you are hiking, for instance, and you’re on your own and you fall and break something or you roll your ankle, and the night is coming and you haven’t seen anyone for an hour. You k...

A satellite, part of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, is shown in a handout. A piece of Canadian satellite radar technology will play a key role in a mission to observe 90 per cent of earth’s water. HO/The Canadian Press A spacecraft aided by Canadian technology has begun its mission to answer one of the most basic but challenging questions in climate science: Where is all the water? The Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission, or SWOT, was launched from California’s Vandenberg Space Force Base early Friday morning aboard a Space X Falcon 9 rocket. The Earth-orbiting satellite was developed by NASA in partnership with the French space agency, CNES, with additional involvement from Britain and Canada. SWOT’s aim is to measure the surface heights of rivers, lakes and coastal waters with about 90 per cent coverage of the globe and track how they change over time. While the task may sound straightforward, the results promise to unlock a bounty of new information about t...

Maxar Technologies Inc MAXR-T, a provider of high-resolution satellite images of the Ukraine war, said on Friday private-equity firm Advent International will buy the satellite owner and operator for about $4-billion. Advent has offered $53 per Maxar share held, a premium of nearly 129 per cent to the stock’s last close. Maxar’s shares jumped nearly 121 per cent in early trading. Westminster, Colorado-based Maxar has more than 90 satellites in orbit that provide communications, imagery and data to customers including the U.S government, Intelsat and SiriusXM. The company is also involved with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Artemis program to return to the moon. Advent has invested nearly $28-billion in defense, security and cybersecurity in the last three years, with its portfolio companies supporting many satellite and defense platforms and serving the U.S. government and its allies. The Maxar deal is valued at $6.4-billion, including debt, and is expected to cl...

Photo : Darryl Fonseka ( Shutterstock ) If you’ve ever looked up at the lights in the nighttime sky and wondered if there’s life up there, rest assured that there is. The third brightest object in the heavens is t he International Space Station where seven people currently reside: three NASA astronauts, one person from the European Space Agency, and three Russian cosmonauts. Spotting the ISS in its orbit is easy too— if you know where (and when) to look. The ISS isn’t the only spacecraft orbiting E arth either . There are thousands, and many are large enough and low enough to see with the naked eye. How to spot the International Space Station The ISS is the easiest manmade object to spot in the nighttime sky. The thing is huge —about the size of a football field—and it reflects enough sunlight to appear 16 times brighter than the North Star if conditions are right. It orbits the E arth every 90 minutes too, so you can probably see it within the next few days. Because of the statio...