Jeremy Hansen, Artemis II crew make space travel history

They really are boldly going where no one has gone before and a Canadian is a big part of it.

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Canadian astronaut Col. Jeremy Hansen and his Artemis II mission crewmates Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Cmdr. Reid Wiseman set a new record for travelling into deep space, going farther from Earth that anyone has ever been before. Hansen and the three U.S. astronauts broke the record early Monday afternoon as they passed the record of 400,171 km from Earth — set by the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission in 1970.

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Hansen, a native of southwestern Ontario and a former fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, became the first Canadian to fly to the moon, making Canada only the second nation to send an astronaut that far.

Left to right: NASA astronaut and Artemis II Mission Specialist Christina Koch, NASA astronaut and Artemis II pilot Victor Glover, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Artemis II and Mission Specialist Jeremy Hansen and NASA astronaut and Artemis II Cmdr. Reid Wiseman. Photo by NASA

To the moon and back

The 10-day missionwhich launched April 1is testing NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems, SLS rocket and life-support systems aboard its Orion spacecraft. The Orion is flying around the far side of the moon with the first humans to do so since Apollo 17 in 1972.

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A view of the Moon from the Orion spacecraft. — A view of the moon from the Orion spacecraft. Photo by NASA

During the lunar flyby, the crew made observations and took photos of the far side of the moon. The astronauts are proposing to name one of the features they noted as Carroll, after the late wife of Wiseman. In addition to Earth, Mercury, Venus and Saturn should also be visible along their route.

Orion is scheduled to start back for Earth in what Mission Control is calling a free-return lunar trajectory to get the astronauts back safe and sound as soon as possible and will splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, Calif.

Canada in space

Canadian ingenuity has played a big part in moon exploration for decades. Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon in 1969 along with Buzz Aldrin, used landing gear built by Héroux Aerospace, now known as Héroux-Devtek, of Longueil, Que.

Astronauts on the Apollo 16 and 17 missions of 1971 and 1972 trained in Sudbury to research geological formations similar to what could be found on the moon. The Sudbury Basin, which was hit by a comet 1.8 billion years ago, was a good starting point due to its similarities to the moon.

To livestream the Artemis II mission, go to NASA’s YouTube Channel.