The Decibel - Artemis II: A Canadian heads to the dark side of the moon

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

April 1st marks the earliest possible date that lunar mission Artemis II could lift off. Decades have passed since humans last visited the moon. After launch, four astronauts – including Canadian Jeremy Hansen – will travel all the way around the celestial body. If all goes according to plan, he’ll become the first Canadian – and non-American – to go to the moon. Decibel producer Madeleine White takes us on a journey along with The Globe’s science reporter, Ivan Semeniuk, They explore how Jeremy Hansen got a seat on this coveted mission, explain why it’s so hard to return to the moon, what the mission entails, and how Canada fits into it all. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Okay, so I'm in studio with producer Maddie White. Hey. Maddie, what are you doing here? Why are you in my studio? I am here to share this video with you. So I'm going to send you this clip because I want to watch it with you here in studio. Okay. Are you slacking me here? I'm slacking you. All right. Let me see what you got.

Here it is. This is a live look. We will see things that no human has ever seen. Wow. Wow, that was very dramatic. Am I watching the trailer for a Blockbuster movie? You're watching the trailer for real life, my friend. Okay, I'm intrigued.

What am I looking at here, Maddie? Okay, so this is a trailer, very much a movie trailer, but actually for NASA's upcoming Artemis II mission, that could launch as early as tonight, April 1st. And this mission is a big deal for a few reasons. Okay, Maddie, I think you've got me, you've got me hooked. So tell me why this is such a big deal. So first of all, this is the first time humans have gone to the moon since 1972.

That's over 50 years ago. And while these astronauts will not touch down on the moon, this four-person crew could travel the farthest any human has gone into space. And while they fly around, they are going to study the surface of the far side of the moon, which very few humans have seen with their own eyes. And depending on the lighting conditions when they get there, they will probably see parts of the moon that we have never seen before.

Wow. I mean, listen, I love this stuff, but I also want to give listeners who are not space nerds like me a reason to care about this mission. Okay. On this crew is a Canadian named Jeremy Hanson. He's the first non-American to go to the moon. And in a way, this mission represents an example of the U.S. and Canada partnering together, which feels, you know, a little noteworthy, given as I'm gesturing around here. Yeah, given the circumstances, given the climate, of course. Given everything that's going on these days.

Yeah. Okay. So today, Maddie, you're going to tell us everything we need to know about the Artemis program, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hanson and the future of moon and space exploration. Yeah. And also a few unexpected ways in which Canada actually contributed to this specific mission. Okay. Well, I'm Cheryl Sutherland.

And I'm Maddie White. And this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. So the risk, you know, you kind of take. take it bite, bite, bite, bite. And so you have to be prepared and you have to understand going into it that there are no guarantees. You're listening to Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen reflect on the risk of the mission he is about to undertake. And I think it's important for people to know that. You know, if you lose a crew on a space mission, they shouldn't be shocked or they shouldn't think, oh my gosh, what did these people do? They shouldn't have made that mistake.

That hindsight's 2020. And we should always have that attitude of if people want to strive for these big goals and they volunteer to go do something, we should allow them to do that. And that's how I feel about this. Even though humans have already been there, getting to the moon is, to state the obvious, dangerous. Launching humans into space involved essentially strapping them onto an explosive device and lighting it. And for a while, we stopped doing it because it was too dangerous.

NASA says none of the seat restraints, helmets, and space suits. used by the doomed crew of the space shuttle Columbia worked well as the ship disintegrated during re-entry. All seven astronauts were killed in the February 2003 accident. The agency is just now releasing a... Humans kept going to space, but only to Earth's orbital treehouse, the International Space Station. But NASA was determined to change that with the Artemis program.

And Artemis II, the second mission of the program, involved sending humans back to the moon for the first time in over 50 years. So there was a lot of competition on who, exactly, would get to go. And surprisingly, Canada scored one of the seats, thanks in part to the great success of the Canada Arm, which you might recognize from a $5 bill. It's the robotic arm that was first involved in the space shuttle program. And the second one, the Canada Arm 2, is on the International Space Station.

So Canada's calling card has been these robot arms. And in exchange for the Canadian Space Agency paying for these arms, Canada has earned essentially seats. It's earned trips to space. That's Ivan Seminick, the Globe's science reporter. He's been covering space news in all of its forms for more than 30 years and has interviewed Jeremy Hansen many times in the lead-up to the Artemis II launch. Because of Canada's commitment, Canada will have at least two astronauts going to lunar space. And the first of those trips is the very first trip back for any person since the Apollo days. That's the ride that Jeremy Hanson is taking.

So suffice to say, there's a lot of pressure riding on Jeremy Hanson. Jeremy grew up on a farm near London, Ontario. His love of space developed early. And for some reason I was interested. in aviation as a young child, and I specifically remember opening up Encyclopedia A, which is a book before we had the internet, and looking in there for airplanes,

but coming across Armstrong, New Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon, and a picture of a human standing on the moon, and it still burnt, that page is still burnt in my brain. And from there on forward, I changed my treehouse into a rocket ship, I had dials, I had gauges, I was going on space missions, I've been inspired by space exploration from an early age.

He was always interested in space. He was interested in flying. He joined the air cadets at age 12. He had his pilots license at 17. And then a year later, he was in the Canadian Armed Forces. And then as an undergraduate, was in the Royal Military College. And then eventually in the Air Force and was a trained CF-18 fighter pilot. So really the most elite and demanding role you can have as a pilot.

In the early 2000s, the Canadian Space Agency issued a public callout for new astronauts. Jeremy was one of more than 5,000 people who applied. He ended up being selected for one of the two spots. But despite these achievements, there was still one thing Jeremy hadn't accomplished. He hadn't been to space yet. His presence on Artemis II is not only a personal milestone, it's also the first time a non-American has traveled to the moon. It's hard to understate how crucial this mission is

for NASA's overall lunar program for Artemis in general. Even though the crew of Artemis II will not land on the moon, all subsequent missions really depend on this first test flight with people on board going smoothly. So this mission is the one that, that unlocks everything else. If there's a stumble at this stage, it will certainly set back the program.

For the Artemis II mission, Canada, the landmass itself played a special role in preparing Jeremy and his crewmates for their lunar voyage. They traveled to a site in Labrador called the Camistassan Crater. The crater is this exposed depression in the Canadian Shield, about 28 kilometers across with a lake inside. It was formed about 36 million years ago when a small asteroid smacked into Earth's crust.

It is a classic impact crater. It has many of the features that an impact crater, many craters on the moon would have. So it's a perfect sort of geological training ground for people who are planning to learn how to read that kind of landscape. But the crater isn't just about scientific value. It's also a sacred place for the Inu in the region. So now, today when you look at it, you will see, they call it Camas Aston Hill, but that is melt rock, and it is a big black hill that is all melted rock that's still remaining from that impact.

So that's on one side of the lake. This is their most sacred place in the crater. And they're very intentional about you respecting that hill. And in just doing simple things, like you don't point at the hill, for example. They typically do not venture onto the hill. And if they were to, they would take some offerings and such things as well. I love the fact that this is sort of where science meets spirituality. They have known for thousands of years that this was a unique, special, and powerful place.

Science has just caught up to them now and been like, wow, this is a really unique special and powerful place. And that was really powerful for us. This isn't the only way that First Nations in Canada played an important role in Jeremy's two and a half years, of training for this mission. One of the benefits of this job for me has been traveling all across country, the country over many years, meeting Canadians across the country,

and I've had the opportunity to sit with indigenous peoples and elders over the years. To honor these experiences, Jeremy wears a special patch on his blue flight suit that features the artwork of Anishnabi artist Henry Gimone of the Sagan First Nation.

On the patch, there are a special patch, drawings of seven animals, each represents a sacred teaching. A buffalo, an eagle, a bear, a turtle, a wolf, a Sasquatch, and a beaver. The teaching of the beaver is very simple that the beaver is a special gift. Of course, it can chew down trees, but it has the wisdom to know how to use its gift in a way that harnesses the power of water to alter its environment and to lift up others in bringing its gift. And we find meaning in life by using our gifts to help others and create. Jeremy said that he learned about his own gift and his life purpose when he accepted the offer

of an elder to go on a vision quest in Manitoba, fasting without food or water for four days. For me, you know, I kind of have this understanding that, you know, the purpose of life is joy. But I find it hard to be joyful when you see everything that's wrong around you. you see wars here and you kind of wonder, how can I be joyful when others are suffering and dying? And what I was kind of left with is it is joy. Your purpose is joy. And you can have that as long as every day you just get up and use your energy for good.

Because you can't fix all those things. You can't control that. But what you can do is be joyful and make sure everything you do contributes positively. We'll be right back. Cape Canaveral, Florida, the home of the Kennedy Space Center and the site of the Artemis II launch. It's always, anytime you've been to the top of a pad at the Cape,

it's also just a cool place. You're on the edge of an ocean, the water's right there, it's lapping against the shore. It's just a beautiful place to be and to imagine leaving the planet from there. It's just really cool. However, getting to that launch pad has been a bumpy ride. Originally, Artemis II was supposed to launch

in 2024. But after an unexpected problem with Artemis I, the first mission, which had no human crew, Artemis II was delayed to 2026. And even with this new deadline, there have been more delays. Originally, Artemis II was supposed to launch in early February. But there was a problem that developed during a dress rehearsal, where they fuel up the rocket to see how everything works and go through a simulated count. down. During that fueling, there were leaks of hydrogen fuel that emerged, and NASA had to stop

and get to the bottom of that. Here's the chair of the Artemis II mission management team, John Honeycutt, explaining how tricky it is to address a hydrogen leak. It's a small molecule, very energetic, and it likes to find leak pass. We've seen that throughout history. This team has worked very hard since Artemis I and knew we had work to do to get us into a place where we weren't having these problems. And I can promise you that they addressed everything that we could get addressed, yet we still ran into this. The problem came down to one seal in a four-inch hose, but they fixed it and decided to test it again. Everything looked good, and in fact, it certainly seemed like a launch in March was now in the cards,

but no sooner had they made that declaration than another problem arose. There was a problem with helium flow through that unit. Again, they had to stop, and this was a tricky one because this is up high on the rocket. They couldn't fix it on the launch pad. They had to roll the rocket back into the giant vehicle assembly building so they could get into the part that was the culprit, and then fix that helium flow. Again, space travel is really hard. But these delays cause people to wonder why things were taking so long.

I think the thing that might be frustrating for people who are trying to follow the program is compared especially to the Apollo program of the 1960s and 70s when there was this push to try to get to the moon by the end of the 1960s. You know, these problems have taken a fairly long time to resolve. And there are a number of reasons why that's the case, but part of it is just the budget involved. People forget that when NASA was going to the moon in the 1960s, you know, it was just as hard, but they had quite a bit more money to work with. The U.S. government was supporting NASA because of the space race with the Soviet Union.

At one point, NASA accounted for more than 4% of the total federal budget. That's just a massive, massive peacetime investment. Eventually, the helium leak was fixed, but all of these delays are also a reminder of how dangerous the mission is. Small problems on the ground can turn into big problems in space. For Jeremy, he said that talking about the risks openly with his crewmates has actually brought them closer together. Building a common understanding of the risk is a really good team building function, you know, talking through some of the, you know, the tough thinking around, the risks that are part of the mission and the things that can go wrong and where we have redundancy and where we

have less redundancy. These are pretty deep conversations for a crew to have and to think about that. These are the people, if we do end up in one of those, you know, bad situations are the people you'll spend your final moments with and you're kind of thinking through some of these things. Like these are pretty deep bonding experiences, I would say. The Artemis 2 crew actually involves two other astronauts who are backups in case one of the main four can't fly come launch day. They too have to prepare for the risk that they could possibly be asked to take. Jeremy's backup is another Canadian. Her name is Jenny Gibbons. Ivan caught up with her in Houston while she was training in the fall.

So today we were training for a scenario where the small capsule that you see behind you, the Orion capsule takes a hit from something in space, let's say, and has a little. a leak. How do we respond to that? It's a very small volume, about a hundred times smaller than the International Space Station. So today we were simulating if we got a leak. Could we get in our suits, do leak checks, safe ourselves, and prepare to come home all within a certain amount of time. We had a timeline of about an hour to do all of that for four crew members today. Launch day is set to be April 1st. There's a lot that goes into picking a launch window. The timing has to be perfect. Artemis 2 can't spend

too much time in the Earth's shadow once it's in space, because it's being powered by solar panels. And on top of that, you want to have a position where the angle between the Earth, the sun, and the moon, also makes some of the far side of the moon visible from the astronauts' point of view. That's a nice side effect of this kind of trajectory. And in fact, the astronauts, when they're going around the back of the moon, may see some parts of the far side illuminated that humans have never seen illuminated. After the four astronauts pile into the Orion crew module or capsule and they blast off, they will be in space for almost 10 days. The way the mission is set up, it's going to be on what's called a free return trajectory. It's a little bit like throwing a ball up into the air

and then gravity brings it back down. So once there's going to be an initial burn that sets Artemis II on its course for the moon, it's then going to swing around the moon in a kind of figure eight pattern and come back. And throughout all of that, you know, the combination of the moon and Earth's gravity will essentially be directing its course. First, the crew will complete one short orbit of the Earth. And then they will embark on a longer orbit that will take them about 24 hours to complete. During that time, they will essentially be testing out how the Orion capsule maneuvers, including simulating a docking procedure, which lays the groundwork for future Artemis missions.

So all of that is going to happen in the first day, only if everything checks out, and if everything goes smoothly, then they'll be in a position to swing around Earth again and burn the engine that will send them on the moon. This is the lunar insertion burn that will put them on course for going around the moon. They are not going to be very close to the moon,

and in fact, from the astronauts' point of view, as you look out the window of the crew cabin, the moon will look at about the same, size of a basketball held at arm's length. And the science really begins once that basketball-sized moon is visible. Jeremy and his crewmates will take turns peering out of the windows of the Orion capsule and closely watching the surface of the moon. This task is so important that Jeremy and the others have been doing simulations,

also called Sims, while on Earth. We really want to prioritize the lunar observations. The geologists are super excited about what we might observe on the far side since human eyes have never seen it. And the human eye brain combinations are really adept at picking up strange things and pulling out differences on a surface. And so they've been training us and we'll have cameras in the window. We'll have someone ounce in the window at all times just reading or recording in a voice recorder what we're observing and making notes for them. It actually turns out to be pretty tiring, constantly observing the moon. making these observations. We all left that sim and everybody kind of remarked, well,

oh, that was really tiring. You might be thinking, wait, what? We're sending humans around the moon to look at the surface with their eyes? Isn't there some high-tech camera or lasers or tricorders or something that should be doing that? But it turns out, human eyes are actually super powerful scientific instruments. Here's how NASA researcher, Dr. Kelsey Young, describes the benefit of human observation. She is the lead for lunar science on Artemis II. There are things that cameras and other types of instruments like spectrometers can't do. The color nuance that the human eye is able to detect is extremely advanced technology, as it turns out. The human eye, especially when that eye, as it is with Artemis 2, is connected to a really well-trained brain, is able to say,

wow, I'm able to tease out these color nuances. And hey, as I'm making this description, the spacecraft is moving over the lunar surface. Now we have a slightly different view of that same target. I'm able to, you know, naturally in milliseconds inside my own brain, draw those comparisons and what comes out in the form of a verbal description accommodates this really actually very complex set of observations. So if you're asking me what I'm most excited about about the mission, it's those verbal observations. Of course, the other space body Jeremy will be observing from the Orion capsule is home. Here's Jeremy talking about this on a NASA panel. And we know that Artemis II is not a solution for humanity on planet Earth,

but it is a contribution in the positive column. We hope that just for a moment that people will pause and say, wow, it's extraordinary that we look back upon the Earth with over 8 billion people. And you would see this concrete example of what humanity can do, this extraordinary thing, when we set big goals and we work together to achieve. Another part of the mission involves doing biomedical research to better understand how the human body fares in space. And even in space, doctors want us to exercise to stay healthy. So the crew capsule has exercise equipment, some of which is tucked under the floor.

Here's Taylor Bird, a NASA biomedical engineer who Ivan met in Houston, explaining how they will be working out in space. For this mission, they're doing 30-minute sessions. Wow. So it'll be 30 minutes a day. And then the plan is for them to alternate. One day they'll do resistive and do like dead rows or squats or dead lifts. And then the next day they'll do like the rowing type and alternate back. Wow.

Rowing in space. Yes. Yeah, especially with how small it is. You can imagine it's the flywheel sits underneath the hatch door. So sometimes when you exercise, you're almost going across the whole cabin with the way that you row. And our crew are not short people. Yes. I said that Jeremy Hanson in particular, our Canadian action on.

Yes. So we're going to learn a lot with that, too, to see when they're exercising, what else can people be doing? Like, they're kind of having to be hidden in other areas of the cabin to get out of the way of the people exercising. Another medical experiment set to take place on Artemis 2 involves something called Avatar Chips. Each of the crew members will fly with a little chip that includes a sample of their blood.

And when the astronauts come back, scientists will draw their blood, compare what's seen in their blood that's in their bodies versus what's seen or what happened to the blood that's on the chip. And then the idea is to sort of calibrate that and then you can use the chip to sort of see if you can predict what the effect of space would be on the body. So then in future, you know, if this works as planned, future crews who are going to space wouldn't be carrying chips of their own blood, but chips of the crew that would follow them. So that there would already be some advance notice of how those astronauts might experience the space environment because their chips are flying ahead of them. Think of this as our warm-up run as we find our space legs again. Next year, NASA is supposed to launch Artemis 3, and then, in 2028, Artemis 4 will put two astronauts on the moon for a week-long mission. But that's not the end of it. But this time, the goal is not flags and footprints.

This time, the goal is to stay. America will never again give up the moon. That brings us to the next step, building the moon base. That was NASA administrator, Jared Isaacman, explaining the world. the wider political goal of this new development in the Artemis program, the moon base. This surface outpost replaces an earlier plan called the Lunar Gateway that was going to have a special made-in-Canada piece of equipment. One of the concepts for the next lunar program, which later would come to be the Artemis

program, was to have an orbiting space station around the moon. So a little bit like the ISS scaled down, orbiting the moon where it could be a platform for going down to the surface or for other activities further off in deep space. And that station would need its own arm. And only now it could be an even more sophisticated version of Canada Arm AI enabled and would have to, in a sense, be more in charge of its own movements and so on. So Canada Arm 3 was the idea there. So what does this mean for the future of Canada's role in these Artemis missions?

So there's no obvious role for a Canada Arm 3. on the moon's surface, although perhaps some version of Canadian robotics could be used on the moon surface, that's not hard to imagine. We're still seeing how all of these pieces readjust around this latest change. It's hard not to notice that when this pivot to going back to the moon was undertaken, when NASA basically declared we're going back to the moon and other partners, partners on the space station and others were invited to join in, that it energized the Canadian space sector. So I guess the question for Canada is if this is going to be a proving ground for technologies and places where countries, companies, research groups can test their metal, can test

their ideas, you know, then Canada's going to want to be there. But space is bigger than nation states. its sheer size forces us to acknowledge that we are one species. Space, in a way, brings us closer at a time where it seems like we are more divided than ever. I think this is good for humanity. And for me, it's right now we need some checks in the wind column for humanity. And Artemis is not going to solve all the humanity's problems. But everything we do in Artemis is going to contribute in a positive way towards the problems we need to solve on our planet.

set a beautiful example of how collaboration is what is needed to tackle the challenges of the future. That was Decimal producer Maddie White. A special thanks to the globe's science reporter, Ivan Seminick, who shared his multiple interviews with Jeremy Hanson with us. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Finn Dermot is our intern and associate producer. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin, and Mihal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.