Jeremy Hansen

Some Lesser Known Facts About Jeremy Hansen

• Jeremy Hansen is a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force, who works as an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He came into the limelight in April 2023 after he was selected as a Mission Specialist for the Artemis II mission, which is expected to fly by the moon in November 2024.

• He grew up on a farm near Ailsa Craig, Middlesex County; In an interview, he revealed that he was five years old when he first saw an image of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon in an Encyclopedia and it captured his imagination; his parents then took him to the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

• Hansen was 12 years old when he joined the 614 Royal Canadian Air Cadet Squadron in London, Ontario.

• In 1992, he passed the Air Cadet Gliding Program in Trenton, Ontario, at 16 and earned his Air Cadet glider pilot wings.

• The following year, he earned his private pilot licence and wings in Cornwall, Ontario; the Air Cadets’ training he underwent as part of the program helped him during his Officer Training period in the Canadian Armed Forces and he got selected for the Royal Canadian Air Force at the age of 18.

• In 2003, Hansen completed the CF-18 Fighter Pilot Training at the 410 Tactical Fighter Operational Training Squadron in Cold Lake, Alberta. Later, he completed two tours with the 441 Tactical Fighter Squadron and the 409 Tactical Fighter Squadron as a CF-18 fighter pilot and was promoted to the rank of Captain.

• In March 2008, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) announced the 2009 Astronaut Recruitment Campaign and received over 5,300 applications; after various rounds of the elimination process, about 79 people were selected for the training process that lasted a year. In May 2009, Jeremy Hansen was recruited by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) along with David Saint-Jacques. ^[1]Toronto Star

• He underwent the Astronauts’ basic training program at the CSA headquarters in Longueuil, Quebec and NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston; After finishing his training program in 2011, he worked as capcom at the Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

• In 2013, the European Space Agency announced that Jeremy was one of the six astronauts selected for the Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising human behaviour and performance Skills (CAVES) training program held in Sardinia, Italy; he spent six days training in an underground cave and also flew a Hawk One F-86 Sabre jet.

• On 8 September 2014, he was named to the training team of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO 19); the underwater expedition took place at the Aquarius Research Station in Key Largo, Florida.

• In 2016, he acted as the Capcom at the Johnson Space Center in Houston; he communicated with crew members on the craft from the Johnson Space Center.

• He is the first Canadian to train an astronaut class at NASA; in 2017, he was given charge of training astronaut candidates from the United States and Canada.

• On 3 April 2023, he was selected as a mission specialist on the Artemis Two mission, which intends to circle the Moon in 2024; he will be the first Canadian astronaut to fly to the Moon. They will orbit for ten days in the Orion spacecraft and will test the key components to prepare for Artemis III which is aimed to take humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972.