Jeremy Hansen

Jeremy Hansen (born January 27, 1976, London, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian astronaut who, as a crew member of the Artemis II mission (April 1–10, 2026), became the first Canadian to travel to the Moon. Artemis II was his first spaceflight, and during the mission he and his crewmates set the record for the farthest distance traveled by humans in space: 406,771 km (252,756 miles).

Early life and education

Hansen was interested in spaceflight from a young age. At age 12 he joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets, which teaches young people about aviation. Through the Cadets he became a glider pilot in 1992. The next year he received a pilot’s license. He was accepted for officer training in the Canadian Armed Forces in 1994. He graduated with a degree in space science from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, in 1999. Beginning in 2004, he served as a CF-18 pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Astronaut

Hansen was selected as an astronaut by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in 2009. He spent two years of training as an astronaut candidate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

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Hansen participated in two “analog” expeditions on Earth that simulated challenges of space. He spent six days underground in a Sardinian cave in 2013 as part of the European Space Agency’s Cooperative Adventure for Valuing and Exercising Human Behaviour and Performance Skills (CAVES) program. In 2014 he lived for seven days in the undersea Aquarius habitat off the coast of Florida as part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) project, in which the habitat and the surrounding ocean simulate the space environment.

Artemis II

In 2023 Hansen was selected as a mission specialist for the Artemis II mission, the first crewed flight in the Artemis program. The crew also consisted of commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Jr., and mission specialist Christina Koch. The four astronauts flew around the Moon in the Orion spacecraft. One of the most touching moments during the 10-day mission came when Hansen announced to Mission Control that the astronauts wanted to propose a name for one of the craters they had discovered. His voice quavering, Hansen said:

It’s a bright spot on the moon and we would like to call it Carroll.

Carroll Wiseman was Reid Wiseman’s wife who died of cancer in 2020 at the age of 46. The four crew members then hugged and Wiseman could be seen wiping away a tear.

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Artemis II was the first crewed mission to the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972, and it will pave the way for the Artemis IV mission, which is planned to land astronauts on the Moon in 2028.