Posted on behalf of Brian Owens.

Steve MacLean{credit}Canadian Space Agency{/credit}

While Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has been captivating the Internet with his live updates and photos from the International Space Station, his colleagues back on Earth are having a tough time.

On Tuesday the president of the Canadian Space Agency, former astronaut Steve MacLean, announced he would be leaving the agency on 1 February to lead a research team in quantum physics at a new venture to be created by Mike Lazaridis, the former chief executive and co-founder of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. Lazaridis is also the founder of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, but MacLean’s new role will not be at Perimeter, according to a spokesman for the institute.

The sudden loss of the president, who has been involved with the Canadian space programme for nearly 30 years, comes as the agency is struggling with steep budget cuts over the next few years, after a decade of flat funding. And an independent review of the space agency and the country’s entire aerospace sector published in November was scathing of the agency’s lack of a strategic plan, and in particular its handling of the Radarsat Constellation Earth-observing satellite programme, which was beset by delays and budget overruns. The CBC has a good overview of the agency’s troubles over the past few years.

MacLean’s successor has not yet been chosen.