Artemis II mission highlights busy stretch for Canadian astronauts

Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen says humankind's upcoming missions to further explore deep space will inspire future generations.

Less than a year away from a historic trip around the moon, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen says humankind’s upcoming missions to further explore deep space will inspire future generations, just as NASA’s Apollo expeditions sparked his passion.

Hansen will be on board Artemis II, slated to launch in November 2024, the first crewed voyage to lunar space since the final Apollo mission more than half a century ago.

Although Hansen, 47, was born a few years after NASA’s Apollo program ended, he still recalls the impact of seeing a photograph in an encyclopedia of U.S. astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon.

“That picture is still burned in my brain. I went back to that page so many times as a kid to look at it, and the realization that humans had left Earth and walked on the moon was a big deal to me. I turned my tree house into a spaceship and started exploring space in my imagination and just never really gave up on that dream of one day flying out there,” Hansen said in a recent interview.

“Now that I’m here and on the cusp of going into deep space, I see a direct benefit to our youth with this Artemis generation and I think reminding youth today that we can do big things, we can collaborate, is just so important for them.”

Hansen, of London, Ont., will be the first non-American to travel beyond the lower Earth orbit. His mission involves a lunar flyby, performing a figure-eight manoeuvre around the far side of the moon before returning to Earth. It will serve as a precursor to a mission expected to land the first woman and the first person of colour on the moon in December 2025 or later.

Preparations for the Artemis II mission will continue right up to launch, which Hansen said remains on schedule. Among the upcoming events will be a simulation in February of the capsule being plucked out of the Pacific by the U.S. Navy – as will happen at the end of the eight-day mission.

“We probably have more question marks than you would imagine, and that’s because this is a test and development program. You sort of go as fast as you can,” Hansen said. “We don’t kind of have it all done and then we just sit around and wait for a launch date.”