Meet the Canadian going around the moon

A Canadian making his first space flight will be part of history when he teams up with three Americans on the Artemis II mission around the Moon.

Jeremy Hunt and his fellow crew members will get closer to the Moon than anyone since the lunar missions of the 1970s.

The flight is expected to happen by early 2025.

Meanwhile, Christina Koch will become the first woman astronaut on a mission to the moon, and Victor Glover will be the first black astronaut on such a journey.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced the quartet will be the first crewed mission on NASA’s path to establishing a long-term presence at the Moon for science and exploration through Artemis.

The agencies revealed the crew members Monday during an event at Ellington Field near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“The Artemis II crew represents thousands of people working tirelessly to bring us to the stars. This is their crew, this is our crew, this is humanity's crew,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Hammock Koch, and CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen, each has their own story, but, together, they represent our creed: E pluribus unum – out of many, one. Together, we are ushering in a new era of exploration for a new generation of star sailors and dreamers – the Artemis Generation.”

The crew assignments are as follows: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist 1 Christina Hammock Koch, and Mission Specialist 2 Jeremy Hansen. They will work as a team to execute an ambitious set of demonstrations during the flight test.

The approximately 10-day Artemis II flight test will launch on the agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket, prove the Orion spacecraft’s life-support systems, and validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space.

Who Is He?

A colonel in the Canadian Armed Forces and former fighter pilot, Hansen holds a Bachelor of Science in space science from Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont., and a Master of Science in physics from the same institution in 2000, with a research focus on Wide Field of View Satellite Tracking.

He was one of two recruits selected by CSA in May 2009 through the third Canadian Astronaut Recruitment Campaign and has served as Capcom in NASA's Mission Control Center at Johnson and, in 2017, became the first Canadian to be entrusted with leading a NASA astronaut class, leading the training of astronaut candidates from the United States and Canada.