Capital Daily for Tuesday, July 7

A UVic-built satellite roughly the size of a long shoebox lifted off just past midnight Tuesday from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, tucked into a SpaceX Falcon 9 alongside dozens of others.

It's called MARMOTSat, named for the Vancouver Island marmot, and it's the second satellite the university's Centre for Aerospace Research has sent up. The team chose the marmot because it's endangered and found nowhere else, a nod to what a West Coast Canadian crew could build.

The satellite has two jobs. It'll run as an open-source radio project any amateur operator on Earth can talk to, lowering the cost barrier for other universities and clubs. And because it sits in the ionosphere, the charged layer that carries radio signals, it can study how greenhouse gases are changing that layer, something climate scientists still don't fully understand.

The instrument was built in a clean room on campus, and the team flew a near-identical test model to the Canadian Space Agency near Montreal as carry-on luggage. A third UVic satellite is planned for 2027, aimed at Arctic connectivity in Canada's north.

Behind every door at 780 Blanshard is a studio. Turn any knob in the yellowish art-deco building at Blanshard and Burdett and you find a workshop full of paint, sculpture, and someone at work.

Reliance Properties wants to convert the old BC Power Commission building into a hotel. If the city grants the heritage alteration permit, upward of 200 artists from four galleries and five non-profit arts organizations will need to find somewhere else to go.

Logan Ford, who runs the Vancouver Island Visual Arts Society, calls it the largest visual arts hub in the history of Victoria. Three times a year VIVAS opens the doors to the public, and as many as 2,000 people stream through in a single afternoon. Now Ford figures the artists could be pulling up stakes as early as next spring, which would make this the sixth home he's had to find in 13 years.

He holds no grudge against Reliance, which rented the space below market for 4.5 years. The trouble is what's left. Every affordable space Ford has seen lately is a stuffy old office with low ceilings and windows that don't open, useless for a painter who needs ventilation. He's hoping a fixer-upper turns up, or a philanthropist does.