Jeremy Hansen waited 16 years to get his shot at going to space.
It was worth the wait.
Hansen sat down with CBC News at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, on Thursday to discuss his mission.
First recruited in 2009 with David Saint-Jacques — who was the last Canadian to go to space in 2018-2019 — Hansen spent years living in Houston, training and preparing for his eventual space mission. But he never thought it would be a flight around the moon.
“You know, I would have loved to have gotten to space earlier, obviously,” he said.
But NASA’s space program changed.
“The shuttle ended and the moon program at that time … got significantly delayed and then it morphed. And so that’s just not how it turned out,” Hansen said.
“Some of that was challenging, but also, you have to just make the best of it. And I really enjoyed the journey along the way. I’ve had some extraordinary experiences.”
But then, on April 1, there he was, sitting on top of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket together with his three NASA crewmates, Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch. Destination: the moon.
That rocket was far more powerful than the space transportation system that NASA used in the shuttle days. It was more akin to the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo astronauts to the moon. So, how was the ride?
“Launching and the ride uphill was just so fun. I mean, I just really enjoyed it. I just found myself loving it,” he said.
He wasn’t thinking about how long he had to wait to get there.
“I was just thinking about that moment. And I was having a lot of fun.”
Was he sick?
But what about once he got there? Roughly 60 to 80 per cent of astronauts experience space sickness. So, did he throw up? Was he sick?
“No, I wasn’t. I got so lucky,” he said. “Maybe being in a small spacecraft made that easier. It probably did. But I just felt great the whole time.”
If you’ve ever seen an astronaut before they launch into space and then when they’re in space, you might notice that their faces look puffy. That’s because there’s no gravity in space to keep bodily fluids in place and they shift upwards.
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Hansen said he did experience some discomfort due to this.
“It just makes it a little harder to concentrate on things,” he said. “I would say like everything [was] just a little bit harder.”
So Hansen wore a thigh cuff, a device that restricts blood flow in astronauts’ legs.
“I found those to be really helpful and that would change that feeling of fullness in my head and within like an hour or two of putting it on, I would sort of feel that diminish,” he said. “That was really neat to me. … They’ve got some good tricks, and there are options for you to use.”
A water bubble problem
The Artemis II was a test mission: the astronauts were to put the spacecraft through its paces, document challenges and their overall experience.
During the mission, there were small things that challenged them. For example, when they were taking photographs of the moon, they had to turn the lights off in the capsule to ensure there was no glare on the windows. Except, there was one problem: Earth.
Earth was shining brightly in a window and lighting up the capsule. So, what did they do? They hung a t-shirt to cover it up.
Then, there were the windows. The windows were numbered so that the astronauts could relay to mission control in Houston what they were seeing out of which window. Except, time and time again, they would mix them up.
Hansen told CBC News that there was also a lesson to be learned from their water system.
“We had to get used to our water system, because you would open up the valve to fill a water bag or hydrate your food and then, if you closed the valve and took it off right away, it would just keep running,” he said.
Instead, he explained, you need to wait about 30 seconds after to take it off. They got in the habit of opening the valve and doing something and then going back and closing the valve and doing something else.
“I did it more than once where I opened the valve, and I went to do something else and then somebody asked me for something and then I looked back and the water bag had exploded,” he said.
So, when there’s a huge bubble of water floating in a capsule filled with electronics that don’t react well to water, what do you do?
“I drank it,” Hansen said, laughing.
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Hansen said that getting reacclimatized to Earth’s gravity hasn’t been that difficult. He puts it down to it having been a short trip — just over nine days — compared to six-month stints on the International Space Station.
As for his favourite moments, he says there were many.
“There’s a list of visuals [and] the physical experiences, riding the rocket uphill and coming down in the capsule, they’re all so cool,” he said.
Still, Hansen said, it was more about the humanity of it all.
“The human experience is what tops it, though,” he said.
“We really had a good time doing this. It was really neat to hear while we were in space that people were connecting, and we didn’t know the extent until we got back. But that’s pretty awesome.”
