Jeremy Hansen, a previous resident of Cold Lake, is now one of the elected astronauts to take part in the Artemis ll mission, which will send four crew members around the Moon and back in 2024.

The first non-American to orbit the moon will be Hansen. The astronaut is familiar with the Cold Lake area as he eventually became a pilot, flying the CF-18s in Cold Lake. He is still a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force. 

“Good for Jeremy. I mean, It’s a big commitment. He’s been waiting for a long time. And you know, he’s just a great individual. A big Cold Laker really, he enjoyed his time here in Cold Lake and he and his wife and family still have investments here,” said Mayor Craig Copeland.

“Everybody in Cold Lake is really proud of them. And we wish them well on the journey. He’s got to wait a bit for that flight. But he’s served his time. You talk about patience, sitting on the bench for about 15 years waiting for that call-up. It’ll be tremendously exciting. Everybody wishes him well.”

Artemis ll is NASA’s first mission with a crew aboard the foundational deep space rocket, the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft.

Hansen is the only crew member who it will be his first time making his journey to space. He holds a Bachelor of Science in space science from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, and a Master of Science in Physics from the same institution. 

In 2017, Hansen became the first Canadian to be entrusted with leading a NASA astronaut class, leading the training of astronaut candidates from both the United States and Canada.

The crew for Artemis ll consists of three American astronauts, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christian Hammock Koch, and one Canadian astronaut, Hansen. 

The four-person crew will lift off on an approximately 10-day mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

Glover will be the first male of colour to fly to the Moon and Koch will join alongside him being the first female to do the same. 

Before this, Artemis l was an uncrewed mission for the debut of NASA’s SLS rocket, which sent the Orion capsule on a around four week trip around the moon.

Orion’s European-built service module will give the spacecraft the big push needed to break free from the Earth’s orbit and set course for the Moon. 

The astronauts will be on an outbound trip of about four days, taking them around the far side of the Moon extending more than 230,000 miles from Earth. 

The crew will fly about 6,400 miles beyond the Moon during the about four-day return trip, the crew will be evaluating the spacecraft systems. 

For the return trip, the Orion will be pulled back naturally by Earth’s gravity for the free return portion of the mission. 

The high-speed, high-temperature reentry through the Earth’s atmosphere before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, where a recovery team from NASA and Department of Defense personnel will bring them back to shore.