First Canadian To Go to The Moon as Officials Reveal Crew for Artemis II Today

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency will announce the names of the four astronauts who will be part of the Artemis II space mission, one of whom is Canadian. This will be the first time a Canadian will venture beyond the Earth’s orbit and the dark side of the lunar surface. The launch could take place as early as November of next year.

The Artemis II space mission will be a 10-day journey to send the first crewed mission to the moon since the final Apollo mission took flight in 1972. The crew will orbit Earth before launching into deep space toward the moon for a figure-8 maneuver and then return home. There will be four astronauts onboard the spacecraft and one of them will be a Canadian.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency will introduce the four astronauts today. There will be three Americans and one Canadian onboard. This will be the first time a Canadian will venture beyond the Earth’s orbit and around the dark side of the moon. Furthermore, Canada and the US will become the only two countries to ever venture that far into space.

This mission is part of the plan to put a man and a woman on the moon in 2025 with the goal of dispatching astronauts to the moon. US President Joe Biden said last month, “Here on Earth, our children who watch that flight are going to learn the names of those new pioneers. They’ll be the ones who carry us into the future we hope to build: the Artemis generation.”

Currently, there are four astronauts in Canada, astrophysicist and medical doctor David Saint-Jacques, a colonel and CF-18 pilot Jeremy Hansen, Air Force Lt.-Col. Joshua Kutryk, and mechanical engineer Jennifer Sidey-Gibbons.

Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne spoke about the mission on Sunday after touring the Johnson Space Center in Houston and said, “This is a big moment for humanity. This time Canada is writing history with our American friends … it’s not even a new chapter. For me, it’s almost like a new book in space exploration.”

Vineet Washington