Canada Reaches Space 5-September, 1959

On September 5, 1959, Canada became the third nation to reach space with a successful launch of the Canadian Black Brant 1 from the Churchill Research Range (CRR) in Northern Manitoba. Over the last 60 years, the Black Brant rocket has evolved and completed 1,000 launches from around the world with over 98% success rate — an extraordinary engineering achievement.

In the 1950s, the Canadian Armament Research and Development Establishment (CARDE) combined new propellants with nosecones and instrumentation from Bristol Aero Industries (later Bristol Aerojet, Bristol Aerospace, and now Magellan Aerospace) to develop the Propulsion Test Vehicle (PVT-1) that would later evolve into a sounding rocket known as the Black Brant 1 (BB1).