Canada’s astronomical boasting

CANADIANS are known for humility. But leave the Earth’s surface and you'll find the country’s ego somewhere up in the thermosphere. Canada’s government websites use doctored photographs of its contribution to the International Space Station to call special attention to itself.

In the image above, America’s Stephen Robinson is on the third spacewalk of space shuttle mission STS-114 in 2005. The NASA photo shows the mechanical arm without the Canadian government logo. But the national branding appears in photos on the websites of its economic policies, immigration service and even the Canadian Space Agency’s official Tumblr account.

Upon becoming part of the internet’s flotsam and jetsam, the doctored picture’s reach only increased. It appears on sites as far away as Austria, South Korea, India, Iran and the United Arab Emirates, according to a Google image search.

Of course, countries have long fiddled with photographs to present an image of grandeur. But the tactic of fairly ham-fisted airbrushing used here seems more reminiscent of North Korean propaganda posters than of Western democracies' typical PR efforts.

The irony is that the “Canadarm2”, as it is self-referentially known, actually does have a Canadian government logo on it. But the logo is at the top, far from the fixed camera and depicted upside-down in the NASA image. Perhaps the idea of slapping a fresh logo onto the foreground seemed a harmless move. But history is history. Falsifying it does a disservice to everyone.

Update, December 3rd: This article created some controversy in Canada at the time of publication (see note below). The astronaut pictured in the offending photo also recently wrote to The Economist, saying:

I enjoyed your article on the Canadarm2. As the guy who is in the photo, I was especially proud to ride the arm as my parents were Canadians and I was born a dual US/Canadian citizen. The photo was taken from the starboard cockpit window of the space shuttle Discovery on August 3, 2005, by Eileen Collins, commander of the STS-114 "Return to Flight" mission.

Stephen K. Robinson Ph.D.
NASA Astronaut (Retired)
University of California, Davis

^{Note, 0200 GMT November 1st: The Canadian government websites linked to in this piece featured the modified image at time of publication. All three instances of the image have now been removed; the Canadian Space Agency told the CBC that the use of the image was a mistake.}