Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen is preparing for a lunar mission as a mission specialist for the Artemis II crew.
Hansen spoke with the CBC’s Travis Dolynny about the mission, set to launch in April 2026.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
Travis Dolynny: What are the objectives of the Artemis II mission?
Jeremy Hansen: You kinda have to think of Artemis II as an Artemis program, a campaign of missions that we ultimately think about Mars. But in the interim, we’re focused on the Moon as our next stepping stone, so returning humans to the surface of the Moon. And so for Artemis II, this is very much a test flight.
So we have a new rocket system and we’ve flown it once with no humans on it. This will be the first time we put humans on this rocket, in this capsule. It’s called the Orion capsule on top of the Spatial Space Launch System. We will test this capsule and make sure it’s ready for the future mission.
So in our case, we won’t have a lunar Lander, it won’t be ready yet. We will spend a day flying around Earth, checking out the systems, and make sure that they’re ready for deep space. Once we have confidence in the vehicle, we’ll accelerate to 39 times the speed of sound and head out to the Moon. That whole mission will take about nine days.
TD: Amazing. How does the Artemis program differ from the Apollo missions?
JH: Well, there’s a few differences big picture-wise. One, in Apollo we were limited to the Equatorial regions (around the middle) of the Moon because at the time there wasn’t enough thrust to get to the South Pole, which we’ve targeted now. Primarily, that’s because we’ve realized since Apollo that there actually is water on the Moon. We think if we look in the permanently shadowed regions, some of the craters in the South Pole, we will find water in ice form. That’s sort of a resource for future human exploration.
Going to the South Pole is a key objective. There’s a lot more to learn there. We’re looking at building a space station in lunar orbit called the Gateway, which Canada is contributing a third generation of space robotics to. We want to leverage some of the low gravity areas around the Moon and special orbits for exploring deep space.
And then anytime you go do something like this, you’re going to learn new things. You’re going to push industrial engineering technology; you’re going to do new science. You’re going to have the opportunity to look at things you can’t look at from Earth or even the International Space Station. So, for example, on the far side of the Moon, you can block out all the signals and noise that we create as humans on Earth, all those radio frequencies that we’re constantly beaming out into space. And you can look at things that you wouldn’t be able to hear from here. You can do that from the far side of the Moon. So there’s kind of lots of cool things that we’ll do once we figure out how to get back there again.
LISTEN | Astronaut Jeremy Hansen on preparing for the Artemis II mission to the Moon:
London Morning7:40Astronaut Jeremy Hansen getting ready for Artemis II mission
In just over a year, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen will be on a lunar mission, flying as part of NASA’s Artemis II crew. London Morning caught up with Hansen to hear more about the lunar mission.
TD: Another thing you might get to see is the iconic Earthrise. How does that moment sound to you?
JH: Amazing. So as we approach the Moon, obviously, we’ll get a nice close-up view of the Moon, and we will go around the far side of the Moon for a period of time and will lose contact with Earth. We’ll be experiencing a loss of communication for about 45 minutes where we can no longer communicate back to Mission Control. And then, as we come around the far side, we’ll regain communications as we pick up line of sight with Earth, but we’ll also have an Earthrise. Just like you and I would watch the sun rising over the horizon or the Moon rising, in this case, we’re gonna see the Earth rise over the horizon of the Moon, which would be pretty spectacular. It’s one of the things I’m super pumped about.
One way or the other, we’re going to be sending back imagery and videos taken by human hands to humanity on the planet and just reminding them of that incredible perspective that we all know in the back of our minds. Sometimes we forget we’re one species on this amazing planet, and we can do extraordinary things when we create together versus destroy and when we support one another and collaborate. It’ll be our Apollo generation, where we try to remind ourselves, ‘Hey, let’s have these moon shots for humanity. Let’s set big goals and get people to work together to accomplish some incredible things.’
As a father of three, it really resonates with me because we have big challenges together as humans on the planet. And one of the things we got to get better at is collaborating.
TD: Speaking of doing extraordinary things, how has the training for the mission been for you so far?
JH: I’m having the time of my life. I really love this. I’m working with an incredible team of people. You know, we often say that, but I really mean it. These are extraordinary people. International team that’s doing hard things. We’re … building new technology, using new technology to build more advanced systems than we’ve done before. And of course, we’re running into barriers and roadblocks. And I love being part of the team that figures out ways to get over them. I love watching these people succeed in that and it lifts me up and gives me hope for our future. And so I just have to say, this is truly a highlight of my career.
Being involved in this is very much a first with respect to testing and developing a new system, which is super fascinating to be behind the scenes and see how we test to find the issues and then how we work together to overcome them and wade in the midst of that. It’s a real treat.
TD: It sounds like it’s going to be an amazing mission.
JH: One of the things I want to do as the Canadian on this Artemis II mission with my three American colleagues is just reflect back to me, humanity in general, but specifically in my case to Canadians. Just remind them it’s pretty extraordinary that we are the second country in the world who’s been invited to fly humans into deep space. And it wasn’t a gift. We earned it.
We have a lot of creative genius in our country. We’ve created real innovation that our international partnership desires. And you don’t get here because it’s a gift. You get here because you brought that contribution and you shared it. And a lot of Canadians earned this opportunity for us. So I’m awfully proud of them and feel really grateful to have the opportunity to represent them in space.
