Jeremy Hansen visits Halifax, Canso Spaceport after Artemis II
jeremy hansen returned to Nova Scotia this week after the Artemis II mission, greeting school children in Halifax, taking questions from a sold-out crowd, and visiting Spaceport Nova Scotia in Canso. The Canadian Space Agency astronaut also stopped at CFB Shearwater, where he was honoured at a ceremony.
Hansen said the visit was part of a larger story for Canada’s space work. In an interview, he said he is excited about what is happening at Spaceport Nova Scotia and that it makes complete sense that Canada will become a country with sovereign launch capability.
Halifax Central Library and the Discovery Centre
On Wednesday, Hansen greeted school children from Truro at the Discovery Centre, then took questions Wednesday night from a sold-out crowd at Halifax Central Library. To the children, he said, “You probably heard I flew around the moon.”
The remarks came after a mission that launched on April 1 and returned to Earth nine days later. Artemis II was the first crewed mission to the moon in more than 50 years, and Hansen made history as the first Canadian to travel to the moon.
Spaceport Nova Scotia in Canso
Earlier in the day, Hansen visited Spaceport Nova Scotia in Canso and witnessed a rocket launch. He said, “It just makes complete sense to me that we will become a country with sovereign launch capability. So I’m really proud of Maritime Launch, that they’ve had the perseverance and the persistence to get to this point where they’re starting to launch,”
He added, “This is a major contribution for Canada, and something that we can contribute on the world stage going forward. You know, it’s not done yet, it’s just the beginning, hard fought so far, but I have such great hopes for it in the future. I hope people are proud.”
CFB Shearwater Ceremony
At CFB Shearwater, Hansen said, “For me, the only way it works is if I’m a bit of a mirror, to reflect that back on Canadians and remind ourselves how incredible we are, how we approach problems with an incredible can-do attitude, and we have an amazing reputation on the world stage when it comes to space technology and contribution, so the final bit of that is this was not our pinnacle, this was just one step along the way. We’re the second country to set a human in deep space. What are we going to do next?”
The answer for now is in the path he described: a mission that tested life-support, navigation and other systems in deep space, then a visit built around the places and people meant to carry that work forward in Nova Scotia. Hansen’s tour tied the moon flight to a launch site, a library crowd, and schoolchildren who heard about it in person.
