Astronaut Jeremy Hansen fields kids’ queries, 100 days from Artemis 2 launch opening

October 16, 2025

Astronaut Jeremy Hansen fields kids’ queries, 100 days from Artemis 2 launch opening

Jeremy Hansen is on the cusp of embarking on a historic deep space mission to the moon, admitting to some inquisitive students Thursday that while the unknowns present a scary prospect, some risks are worth it.

Hansen was asked about his fears as he took questions from Grade 5 and 6 students from St. Jude Elementary School on Montreal’s South Shore about the Artemis 2 mission around the moon.

“What helps me with that is that I have learned to trust myself and to trust others,” Hansen, 49, of London, Ont., said at the Canadian Space Agency headquarters in Longueuil, Que.

“And I have no guarantee of the outcome: you can die in space just like you can die here on Earth, but what I do believe is that we have been very smart about our approach.”

The Canadian and his NASA astronaut crewmates could launch their roughly 10-day sojourn around the moon and back as early as February 2026.

The first crewed mission of the Artemis program is also the first mission to the moon by astronauts since the last Apollo mission in 1972 and is also Hansen’s first-ever mission in space.

Hansen would become the first non-American to travel beyond the lower Earth orbit.

The team, which includes veteran NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, have been training for more than two years and will travel aboard the Orion spacecraft they’ve named “Integrity.”