Canadian Astronaut Will Join Historic Mission to Moon

Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen stands in front of a display as he participates in an interview at the opening of Earth in Focus: Insights from Space, a new exhibition at the Canada Science and Technology Museum in Ottawa, on Nov. 26, 2021. Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Jeremy Hansen is set to make history as the first Canadian astronaut to fly to the moon, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has announced.

Hansen will fly around the moon, joining NASA’s Artemis II 10-day mission, expected to take place in November 2024. The mission will make Canada the second country to ever send an astronaut around the moon, according to an April 3 news release from the CSA.

According to the space agency, this is the first crewed mission to the moon since the end of the Apollo space program more than 50 years ago.

The announcement was made at Ellington Field, a joint military facility and flight operations base in Houston, Texas.

“Over the last four decades, Canada’s astronauts have earned a world-class reputation as modern-day explorers while being a source of inspiration to countless Canadians,” said the CSA.

Hansen is a 47-year-old former military fighter pilot. Raised on a farm in Ontario, he speaks English, French, and basic Russian. At 12 years old, he joined the Air Cadets, obtaining his private pilot license at 17 years old, eventually going to the Royal Military College Saint-Jean in Quebec.

Hansen joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1994 and served as a CF-18 fighter pilot. He was one of two recruits selected by the CSA in 2009, and worked as a communications officer at the Mission Control Centre, serving as the voice between earth and the International Space Station.

As part of his training in 2013, Hansen lived underground in Sardinia, Italy, for six days, taking part in the European Space Agency’s CAVES program.

He also spent seven days working on the ocean floor off Key Largo, Florida. By 2017, Hansen was the first Canadian to lead a NASA astronaut training class, in charge of recruits from both Canada and the United States.

Hansen, who is a lieutenant colonel, said he had been “fascinated with space exploration” for as long as he could remember.

He said that the United States could have chosen to send only American astronauts to the moon, but instead chose to collaborate.

“At the end of it all, I am left in awe of being reminded what strong leadership—setting big goals with a passion to collaborate and a can-do attitude—can achieve,” Hansen said.

“We’re going to the moon together. Let’s go.”

The other three astronauts on the Artemis II mission are American and include mission commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialist Christina Hammock Koch.

The crew will orbit Earth, then do a figure-8 around the moon.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described Hansen as an “exceptional individual” who made Canadians proud.

“I’m very, very excited to see that a Canadian has been chosen to actually go to the moon. It’s a major event for us,” said Trudeau.

In 2018, Canadian David Saint-Jacques, an astrophysicist and medical doctor from Montreal, flew to the International Space Station. Nine Canadian astronauts in total have flown to space 17 times, according to the CSA.

The agency said that Hansen’s Artemis II flight is a direct result of Canada contributing Canadarm3, a smart robotic system, to the Lunar Gateway.

The Artemis program is a collaboration led by NASA, with contributions from the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency, and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, and the participation of several companies.

Artemis is a multi-mission program that begins with missions around the moon before a mission that lands on the lunar surface. In addition to crewed and uncrewed missions, the program includes the construction of the Lunar Gateway space station in orbit around the moon.