Downey's body was discovered Thursday in the living quarters at Camp Mirage, a base in the Persian Gulf that is used as a staging area for Canadian airlifts to Afghanistan.

"The airman died on an overseas mission in support of the mission in Afghanistan and to the military it's irrelevant how or where somebody is killed," said Maj. Jay Janzen, spokesman for Task Force Afghanistan. "What's important is that we honour and respect our fallen comrades at all times no matter what the circumstance."

DND OTTAWA - At approximately 4:15 a.m. (EST) July 4, a Canadian Forces member was found dead in an accommodation room in the Theatre Support Element compound in the Gulf region.

Deceased is Corporal Brendan Anthony Downey, a Military Policeman from the Military Police Detachment in Dundurn, Saskatchewan

With its protective bricks torn away by the recent space shuttle launch, the flame trench at Launch Pad 39A will be given a new layer of protection in time for the next space shuttle liftoff.

The flame trench channels the flames and smoke exhaust of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters away from the launching spacecraft.

A swath of about 3,500 protective bricks tore away from the walls of the structure when space shuttle Discovery lifted off May 31 to begin its STS-124 mission. None of the bricks bounced back in the area of the shuttle. Preliminary computer models of the exhaust pattern suggest no likelihood of loose bricks coming back to the mobile launcher platform or the shuttle.

The Pentagon will buy and operate one or two commercial imagery satellites and plans to design and build another with more sophisticated spying capabilities, according to government and private industry officials.

The satellites could spy on enemy troop movements, spot construction at suspected nuclear sites and alert commanders to new militant training camps.

The Broad Area Surveillance Intelligence Capability (BASIC) satellite system will cost between $2 billion and $4 billion. It would add to the secret constellation of satellites that now circle the Earth, producing still images that are pieced together into one large mosaic.

As the summer fire season heats up, NASA aircraft are set to follow the trail of smoke plumes from some of Earth's northernmost forest fires, examining their contribution to arctic pollution and implications for climate change.

Starting June 29, NASA's DC-8 and P-3B aircraft, based at [14 Wing] Cold Lake, Alberta, will begin their final three-week deployment of the Arctic Research of the Composition of the Troposphere from Aircraft and Satellites, or ARCTAS, mission. A third NASA aircraft, the B-200 King Air, will fly from Yellowknife, Canada. The mission is the most extensive field campaign ever to study the chemistry of the Arctic's lower atmosphere. The three airborne laboratories are equipped to fly through the smoke plumes of northern-latitude forest fires. The resulting data, when combined with simultaneous satellite measurements, could reveal the impact of forest fires on the arctic atmosphere.