Canadarm’s 1981 space deployment designated national historic event

Canadarm’s first deployment in space in 1981 has been designated a national historic event, marking the robotic arm’s place in Canada’s space and engineering history.

Parks Canada unveiled a commemorative plaque Wednesday at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. The arm was developed during the 1970s and first deployed aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1981.

The original Canadarm was 15.2 metres long and weighed 410 kilograms. It was used on 90 shuttle missions between 1981 and 2011 to deploy and repair satellites, support spacewalks and help assemble the International Space Station.

Source: Parks Canada, designation announcement, November 4, 2026.

Illustrative archival space image: Space Shuttle Atlantis during a Hubble servicing mission. Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash, used under the Unsplash License; cropped and resized. It does not depict Canadarm’s 1981 deployment.