Another Canadian who grew up on a farm is heading space, and this time it’s further afield than any Canadian has ever gone.
Jeremy Hansen, who grew up on a farm near Ailsa Craig, Ont., then attended high school in Ingersoll, Ont., was named as a crew member on the Artemis II mission to orbit the moon on April 3. His flight is scheduled for November, 2024 and will pave the way for future missions to the moon’s surface and in establishing an orbiting station.
Hansen will become the first non-American to fly to deep space, as all of the previous astronauts from the Apollo missions were American. He was born in London, Ont., and raised in what is now North Middlesex, north of Ailsa Craig. The farm house in which he lived was torn down several years ago and the farm is now part of the operations of a larger area farm.
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Hansen is one of several high-profile astronauts who have been raised on farms, including Canadian Chris Hadfield and his fellow Artemis II crew member Christina Koch. NASA mentioned Koch’s farm upbringing in its introduction of the Artemis crew at the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.
Hansen learned to fly as an air cadet in rural Ontario and then attended the Royal Military College for undergraduate and masters degrees. He then became a fighter pilot, flying Canadian F-18s.
He says he always has been interested in space exploration.
“I looked at a photograph of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon and I wanted to see what it would be like to leave this planet and look at it from beyond,” he said in a Canadian Space Agency video.
Hansen has posted about the connection he sees between agriculture and space, often accompanied by a photo of him with a John Deere 8640 tractor at the former family farm on what is now Maguire Road, north of Ailsa Craig.
