Artemis 2 moon astronaut says about the risk of flying NASA's supersonic training jet.

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Artemis 2 astronaut Jeremy Hansen flying the T-38 aircraft. Behind him is fellow Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jenni Sidey-Gibbons. (Image credit: Jeremy Hansen/Facebook/Canadian Space Agency)
 

Fighter jet pilot and astronaut Jeremy Hansen has seen a few things on his way to the moon.

 

One of the four crewmembers of the Artemis 2 moon mission slated to launch in November 2024, Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut Jeremy Hansen recently praised the supersonic T-38 trainer jet for its ability to keep astronauts on their toes while in flight.

 

"We use these airplanes because they're challenging," Hansen said in a video released Tuesday (July 18) on the CSA's social media channels. 
 

 

"We can have two astronauts in the cockpit together working as a team, just like we do in a spacecraft. We have so many amazing simulators here ... but none of those simulators will kill you. This will. That is one of the benefits of this training, is that we are managing real risks preparing us to go to space."

Artemis 2 will be the first moon mission in a half-century with humans on board. It includes NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Hansen. The first human lunar landing mission since 1972's Apollo 17 will be Artemis 3, currently scheduled to launch in 2025 or 2026 if schedules hold. (This week also marks the 54th anniversary of the first human moon-landing mission, Apollo 11, on July 20.)
 

During Artemis 2, NASA has pledged that all four astronauts on board will get to fly the Orion spacecraft to provide data for future missions. Hansen and Koch are mission specialists on that spacecraft, while Glover is pilot and Wiseman will be commander.

Canada's seat on Artemis 2 came via its contributions to NASA's Artemis program, which aims to establish a sustainable human presence on and around the moon by the end of the 2020s.  The chief contribution is a robotic arm known as Canadarm3, which will service NASA's Gateway space station at the moon later in the decade.
 

Hansen has considerable ground experience to bring to his moon mission, including having managed the training schedules of the entire 2017 astronaut class — a first for a Canadian. He also has thousands of hours in the cockpit across different airplane types. While selected in 2009, he has not yet flown to space, as Canada has a modest 2.3% robotics contribution to the International Space Station, which works out to a CSA flight about every six years or so under current launching rates.

 

Hansen first began flying gliders with Canadian Air Cadets at age 16 and got his private pilot license the year after. He joined the Royal Military College as an undergraduate, and his flight experience includes serving as a CF-18 fighter pilot with two tactical fighter squadrons, along with a role as combat operations officer for NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) operations, deployed exercises and Arctic flying operations.