Astronaut Jeremy Hansen grew up on a farm near Ailsa Craig
By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com
A Canadian astronaut who will orbit the moon next year began staring at the stars on an Ontario farm.
Jeremy Hansen, who grew up on a farm near Aisla Craig, Ont. was named to the four-person crew for the Artemis II mission on Monday morning.
“I have great memories of working on the farm, being outside, (and) playing with my friends and cousins in the barn,” Hansen told 106.9 The X in October 2020.
Artemis II is part of NASA’s mission to return astronauts to the surface of the moon. It’s the first crewed mission to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972.
By the way, did you know the lunar surface of the moon is about 9,383,748,198 acres? That’s a lot of corn!
This will be Hansen's first mission to space and he will be the first Canadian to orbit the moon. He'll serve as a mission specialist.
He and three U.S. astronauts are scheduled launch in November 2024 on the Orion spacecraft, perform a lunar flyby and return to Earth. The mission is scheduled to last about 10 days.
Growing up he wondered how space and farming were connected.
“As an astronaut who grew up on a farm in southern Ontario, the link between space and agriculture really interests me!” Hansen said in a May 2021 Facebook post highlighting an Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit on that topic.
He wanted to become an astronaut because he liked the notion of completing something that may seem impossible.
“I like the fact that in space, we are committed to bold goals to the extent that we will not let periodic failure stop our forward progress,” he said in a Canadian Space Agency Q&A.
Canadian food innovation is contributing to the Artemis mission.
The Deep Space Food Challenge, launched in 2021, will see participants develop ways to produce food in deep space with few resources.
Farms.com has contacted the Canadian Space Agency to try to schedule an interview with Hansen.