After 15 years, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen’s wait to go to space gets a little longer | 24CA News
After 15 years of ready, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen should wait not less than yet another yr earlier than his first flight in house.
NASA introduced Tuesday that the launch date of the Artemis II mission to the moon, initially scheduled for later this yr, has been pushed again practically a yr to September 2025.
The Artemis program is a plan to return people to the moon for the primary time since Apollo 17 in 1972. Unlike the Apollo program, throughout which astronauts explored the moon for a number of hours or days, Artemis is supposed to finally set up an area station in lunar orbit and a base on the floor of the moon the place astronauts can reside and work for prolonged intervals.
The rocket for Artemis, the Space Launch System or SLS, is partially derived from re-purposed house shuttle {hardware}. So far, there was just one launch, an unmanned flight across the moon in 2022. That mission was profitable, however NASA says there have been points that must be addressed earlier than the subsequent one takes place.
One subject was that the warmth defend on the underside of the capsule, which protects the astronauts throughout the fiery re-entry into the Earth’s ambiance, shed extra materials than anticipated, in order that little bit of crucial {hardware} is being re-examined. NASA engineers additionally discovered some minor defects in some electrical programs that they wish to exchange and check as effectively.
NASA’s ultra-cautious strategy
During a news convention, NASA officers stated security is their first precedence they usually will not launch till prepared. They actually do not desire a repeat of the Apollo 13 mission when an oxygen tank exploded on the best way to the moon threatening the astronauts’ lives. Nor do they wish to relive the full lack of a spacecraft and crew such because the Columbia and Challenger house shuttle disasters. Those experiences have taught NASA to be ultra-cautious.
That cautious strategy to house flight is likely one of the causes behind the gradual progress of the Artemis program. To put that into perspective, when former U.S. president John F. Kennedy introduced in 1961 that America was going to land males on the moon inside the decade, the objective was reached in 9 years. In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the primary footprints in lunar mud.
That crash program included designing all the pieces from scratch. There had been 5 different lunar landings within the subsequent three years. Artemis was introduced in 2017 with just one unmanned launch in 2022. It reveals that much more than 60 years later, attending to the moon remains to be not straightforward.
Hansen to be 1st Canadian to journey to moon
Artemis II is deliberate to hold a crew of 4, together with Hansen, who would be the first non-American to go away Earth’s orbit.
A former Canadian Forces fighter pilot, Hansen was chosen by the Canadian Space Agency to be an astronaut in 2009 together with David Saint-Jaques. But he is needed to wait whereas his fellow astronauts Chris Hadfield, then Saint-Jaques, had been chosen to fly lengthy period missions on the International Space Station.
But Hansen hasn’t spent his time sitting idly ready for a experience on a rocket. He has been continually busy performing many roles, together with capsule communicator, the individual in mission management who speaks on to the crew in house. He participated in a human efficiency experiment in a collapse Sardinia carried out by the European Space Agency and was a crew member in NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), throughout which he spent ten days in an underwater habitat off the coast of Florida that’s used as an analogue for the house station and a simulator for an outpost on the moon. NEEMO astronauts don spacesuits and use the ocean flooring to practise strolling on the lunar floor.
Hansen has additionally been an teacher for brand spanking new astronauts and inspiration for younger individuals throughout the nation to grow to be concerned with STEM.
In 2023, it seemed like Hansen’s lengthy wait was lastly over when he was chosen as a crew member for Artemis II. Now with the newest delay, his dream of flying in house should wait one other yr.
Despite the wait, Hansen’s flight might yield enormous rewards. He will experience atop a vastly highly effective rocket, try a brand new spacecraft and get a brand new perspective on our planet as seen from the far facet of the moon with the tiny Earth within the distance floating within the blackness. It is certain to have a profound influence on him and those that observe.
