Jeremy Hansen

Jeremy Roger Hansen was born on 27 January 1976 in London, Ontario, and grew up on a farm near Ailsa Craig before moving to Ingersoll for high school—a rural Canadian upbringing he has long credited for shaping him. His path to space began early: as a teenager he joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets and learned to fly gliders, and he went on to the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, earning a Bachelor of Science with Honours in space science in 1999 and a Master of Science in physics in 2000. Commissioned into the Royal Canadian Air Force, Hansen became a CF-18 fighter pilot based at CFB Cold Lake, Alberta. In 2009 the Canadian Space Agency selected him as an astronaut alongside David Saint-Jacques, drawing him from the fighter cockpit into the international astronaut corps.

For more than a decade Hansen trained and supported missions without flying, building a reputation as one of the corps' most capable instructors—in 2017 he became the first Canadian entrusted by NASA to lead an astronaut class, guiding that year's group of NASA and CSA candidates through their training. His single spaceflight is a landmark one: as a mission specialist on Artemis II, launched in April 2026, he flew aboard the Orion spacecraft on its roughly ten-day journey around the Moon and back. With that flight he became the first Canadian—and the first person from any nation other than the United States—to travel beyond low Earth orbit and journey to the vicinity of the Moon, a distinction secured through Canada's partnership contributions to the Artemis program, including the Canadarm robotics destined for the lunar Gateway.

Hansen's significance is national as much as personal. His flight of Artemis II carried Canadian human spaceflight, in a single leap, from low Earth orbit to deep space, and it made him a powerful symbol for a country whose astronauts—Marc Garneau, Roberta Bondar, and his own inspiration Chris Hadfield among them—had until then flown only in Earth orbit or on the shuttle. A decorated RCAF officer whose honors include the Canadian Forces Decoration, he remains an active CSA astronaut and a dedicated advocate for STEM outreach in Canadian schools and for youth in rural and underserved communities. He has spoken of wanting young Canadians, especially in small communities like the one he came from, to see themselves in exploration—and, describing the view from deep space, he called it simply glorious.