Jeremy R. Hansen: First Canadian In Deep Space

Born in 1976 in London, Ontario, Jeremy Hansen cannot remember a time when he did not dream of being an astronaut. And now, as member of the crew of Artemis 2, he will see the far side of the Moon as they loop around it.

Born in 1976 in London, Ontario, Jeremy Hansen cannot remember a time when he did not dream of being an astronaut. Seeing a picture of Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface, he wondered what it would be like to walk there—and now, as member of the crew of Artemis 2, he will see the far side of the Moon as they loop around it.

During Hansen’s youth, it became increasingly possible to imagine a Canadian doing such a thing. Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space in 1984, when he flew on STS-41G as a payload specialist. NASA had made that seat available because the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) provided the Canadarm Remote Manipulator System for the Space Shuttle. Garneau flew two more missions as a mission specialist after NASA allowed non-Americans to join new astronaut classes. Other Canadians served on Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) crews, most memorably when Chris Hadfield commanded the station in 2013. For that program, CSA contributed Canadarm2, a more advanced, double-ended remote manipulator system with a mobile base.

Hansen followed a classic path to the astronaut corps—he became a fighter pilot.  Growing up on a farm near the mid-size city of London, Ontario, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets at age 12. He earned his glider wings at age 16 and his pilot license at 17, which set his path to becoming an officer in the Royal Canadian Air Force (he is now a colonel). His eyes still set on space exploration, he graduated in 1999 from the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario, Canada’s primary service academy, with a bachelor of science in space science. He added an master of science in physics there in 2000, with a thesis on satellite tracking. After completing jet training on the CF-18 (a Canadian version of the McDonnell-Douglas F-18 Hornet), Hansen served from 2004-2009 in squadrons in Cold Lake, Alberta, that were part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

A star who won awards at every career level, Hansen became one of two selected in CSA’s third astronaut recruitment in 2009. After moving to Houston, Texas, to become a member of NASA’s new astronaut class, he graduated training in 2011. That allowed him to assume various roles, including working in Mission Control as a CAPCOM (capsule communicator) on ISS missions. Rather than preparing for a station mission, which requires a fluent command of Russian and training in Russia as well as the United States, he seems to have set his sights early on deep space exploration. In 2013, he lived underground with European astronauts for six days as part of a European Space Agency cave-training program; a year later he spent a week underwater in the Aquarius habitat off Key Largo, Florida, something Hadfield and other astronauts have done. In 2017, he became the first non-American to lead a new NASA astronaut class through their two years of training.

Why was he named to the crew of Artemis 2 in 2023? In the 2010s, as NASA searched for a pathway to the Moon and Mars, it decided to build a small space station in lunar orbit named the Gateway. Canada promised to contribute Canadarm3 to the planned Gateway space station (Gateway has since been deprioritized as an operational part of Artemis program). In 2019, the first Trump Administration gave NASA’s human lunar program the label Artemis and added landing near the Moon’s south pole as the program’s primary objective. CSA, as the first non-American space agency to join Artemis, asked for and was granted a seat on the first crewed flight. (Artemis I looped around the Moon in an uncrewed test in November-December 2022.)  If all goes well, Hansen and his crewmates—Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch—will spend about ten days in space, testing their new Orion spacecraft in Earth orbit, then making a journey around the Moon.

When NASA asked CSA to nominate someone for the Canadian seat, Jeremy Hansen was the obvious and logical candidate. (Jenni Gibbons, from my hometown of Calgary, is his backup.) He will be not only the first Canadian to fly into deep space, but he will also be the first from any nation other than the United States. No human has left low Earth orbit since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. If all goes well, he will enjoy a spectacular view and help pioneer the human return to the Moon. It’s a fitting assignment for someone who has dreamed of going there since he was a small boy.