Col. Jeremy Hansen during an Artemis II media briefing at Johnson Space Center in Houston, on Wednesday.Annie Mulligan/The Globe and Mail
A crew must have its ship and a ship must have its name.
On Wednesday, astronauts participating in NASA’s Artemis II lunar mission, including Canadian Jeremy Hansen, revealed they have selected a name for their Orion crew capsule.
“We are bringing together an amazing work force and they are bringing together an amazing vehicle,” said mission commander Reid Wiseman during a news briefing. “So we’re going to fly around the moon in the spacecraft Integrity.”
In an interview with The Globe and Mail, Col. Hansen said the name has a particular meaning for the crew. On a geological training expedition in Iceland, the crew and their backups began adopting the word as a state of mind that crewmembers seek to be in and maintain under challenging circumstances, while recognizing that mistakes are an inevitable part of the experience.
“We are human,” he said. “We have to have grace if we want to be a high functioning team. And so this concept of being in and out of integrity, we use it a lot.”
NASA astronauts are in the latest phase of training for their flight around the moon. Along with ground staff, they are running simulations of the Artemis II mission that’s expected to launch in 2026.
Fellow Canadian Jenni Gibbons, who has been assigned as Col. Hansen’s backup for the lunar mission, also participated in the name selection.
Together with commander Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and mission specialist Christina Koch, Col. Hansen is set to launch aboard Integrity no later than April next year for the first crewed mission to the moon in more than half a century.
This week, reporters were invited to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to learn about the flight.
The principal objective of the 10-day mission is to conduct the first crewed test of NASA’s new system for getting humans into lunar space, from vehicle manoeuvrability, to life support to onboard equipment that includes a compact exercise machine and Integrity’s toilet.
All of it will provide crucial data for the next step – a return to the lunar surface to be attempted by Artemis III astronauts as early at mid-2027.
NASA’s Artemis II mission gets ready for closest lunar encounter in decades
For Col. Hansen, the only crewmember who has not yet flown in space, the mission will be a new frontier in more ways than one.
As the minivan-sized capsule passes behind the moon and out of contact with Earth for a period of hours, the astronauts will take photographs and potentially observe landscapes that have not yet been seen by human eyes during lunar missions of the 1960s and 70s.
While all the crewmembers are deeply engaged with their training, Col. Hansen has become known for the many questions he puts to engineers behind the mission.
“We appreciate his inquisitive nature,” said lead flight director Jeff Radigan. “He’s one of the most curious people I’ve ever met in my time here.”
Later, during a tour of mission control, U.S. astronaut Chris Birch, who trained with Col. Hansen and who will be part of the team communicating with the Artemis II crew during the journey, echoed the comment.
“He is just constantly thinking about the spacecraft in different way,” she said of Col. Hansen. “He’s never satisfied with just getting it done. He’s always looking for ways to improve things.”