Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen supports postponing the Artemis 2 mission

Siddhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press

LONGUE, Que. — Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen has agreed with NASA that a planned mission to the moon should be postponed until September 2025, saying such initiatives require courage.

Mr. Hansen and his NASA colleagues, Reed Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, welcomed the postponement of the Artemis 2 lunar mission, which was initially scheduled for next November. He added that the delay would give the team time to resolve technical issues with the Orion spacecraft and its heat shield before the vehicle's first manned flight.

“Now that we have these extra 10 months, we'll have more opportunities to make changes, if we want to, and find something else,” Jeremy Hansen told reporters at CSA headquarters in Longueuil.

“We think we find a lot of aspects that we want to change in the Artemis program; “We will not make all the changes to our mission, but we will identify and, in many cases, changes will be made for future Artemis III and Artemis III and IV missions.”

Artemis II involves a lunar flyby in which Orion must perform a figure-eight maneuver around the far side of the Moon, before returning to Earth. The rover completed an unmanned mission around the Moon – Artemis I – in late 2022.

Risks that must be minimized

The astronaut said that he and his colleagues regularly discuss the risks of spaceflight, but he expressed confidence that NASA will take all necessary measures to reduce the risks before sending his team into orbit.

“Every space mission has risks: launch and landing are of course the biggest risks,” Hansen said. This will be the second time we fly this vehicle (Orion) and the first with humans. “The program is still very new, so there are big risks.”

“When there's danger, like colliding with something in space, you can't turn around and come back,” Hansen said. So no matter what, we have to make do with what we have, once we decide to leave Earth.

The moon mission will serve as a precursor to the Artemis III mission — postponed until September 2026 — which aims to land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon. This mission will be the first time astronauts have walked on the moon in more than 50 years.

The Canadian astronaut was visiting the Canadian Space Agency headquarters, where the media was able to discover how the team was preparing for the Artemis II mission. Mr Hansen was alongside Jenny Gibbons, who was appointed in November to take his place if he was unable to make the trip.

Demonstrations included examples of physical training sessions and an update on the development of Canadarm3, a new robotic arm being built for NASA's Gateway lunar station.

Some of the Canadian dishes that will accompany the astronaut on his mission were also displayed: curried shrimp with rice, maple cream biscuits, wild salmon bites, and maple syrup.