It was at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on October 5, 1984, that Marc Garneau, a member of the Canadian Royal Navy, became the first Canadian in space when he was on board the Space Shuttle Challenger Flight STS-41G for an eight-day mission. The mission travelled a total distance of 3.4 million miles around the Earth in 133 orbits for a total duration of 197 hours and 23 minutes.

In celebration of this marvelous feat - Garneau would eventually fly two more Space Shuttle missions, spending almost 678 hours in space (he's now retired as an astronaut) - we present some of the Fisher Library's space-related holdings. At left is an image from C.S. Lewis' Will we lose God in outer space? (click on link for catalogue record). At the bottom are images from The celestial worlds discover'd, or, Conjectures concerning the inhabitants, plants and productions of the worlds in the planets, published in 1722; the 1961 novel Flying saucers farewell by George Adamski; and Glenn Clever's book of poems Age of the Astronauts, published in 1971.

On this Date: First Canadian in Space