Exploration
Kutryk says Canada has a crucial role to play in the ‘new ocean’ of space
Canada’s next astronaut, who will fly to space in September, is not only inspired by the Artemis moon missions, but by the Canadian Arctic.
Joshua Kutryk was announced in April as the next Canadian to fly to the International Space Station, where he’ll remain for about half a year. Weeks after the Artemis II’s mission’s “moon joy,” with Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen on board, Kutryk will bring his own desire for exploration and learning beyond Earth’s atmosphere.
“I want to explore places humans have never been. And that means space,” the Canadian Space Agency astronaut said in a livestreamed address on May 23.
Kutryk also shared that he is reading a book about Arctic exploration, as part of his lifelong passion for learning about the unknown: “I always wanted to explore,” he said in the speech, broadcast from the University of Calgary. (The Canadian Space Agency regularly works with Indigenous nations in the Arctic, and other parts of Canada, as it builds its space exploration program.)
That space exploration program has a long history in Canada. Kutryk, as Hansen often does in his own speeches, emphasized to the audience that Canada earned its spot in both the Artemis and International Space Station programs on the strength of more than 45 years of Canadarm robotics in space, among other contributions.
“It’s the result of really, really careful stewardship, planning, policy, sustained investment,” Kutryk explained, adding that Canada has a place in space going forward because “NASA wants stuff that Canada builds, and brings to the table, when it comes to space exploration.”
Kutryk, 44, was selected for the astronaut program in 2017, alongside Jenni Gibbons – best known today for serving as an Artemis II backup crew member and as capsule communicator during the lunar flyby.
He will be the first Canadian to fly on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station. While other Canadian Space Agency astronauts have been to the ISS before – most recently, David Saint-Jacques in 2018-19 – Kutryk said his mission will be a strategic play for Canadian involvement in future moon missions.
He pointed to his personal Crew-13 patch, showing the crescent moon floating above the International Space Station, as a symbol of that lunar commitment: “You see, of course, the space station because that’s where we’re going. You see the moon, because that’s where we’re going next.”
Canada was an early signatory to the NASA-led Artemis Accords, which is a consortium of dozens of nations who have committed to US norms in space. Some countries, including Canada, Japan, and certain European countries, also contributed hardware to a planned NASA space station that would orbit the moon, called Gateway.
In late March, less than two weeks before Hansen’s moon mission, NASA said it would “pause” Gateway to instead pour more resources into a planned lunar base on the surface. Kutryk’s address took place against the backdrop of the international changes associated with that shift. For example, Canadarm3, funded by Canadian Space Agency and developed by Brampton-based private company MDA Space, was initially promised to Gateway in exchange for at least two lunar Artemis astronaut missions (including Hansen’s).
MDA Space’s Canadarm3 contract with Canadian Space Agency is still ongoing, and the company says the robotics can be used for other projects. Meanwhile, both Canadian Space Agency president Lisa Campbell and NASA have said international partners will have a place in the moon’s base’s development.
Kutryk said the certain thing about NASA is the agency is committed to that moon base. “In the next few years, I’m 100 per cent confident you will see American astronauts starting to build this moon base on the surface,” he said. “We certainly hope that you’ll see astronauts from other countries there, and possibly even from Canada as well.”
Lightly referencing US politics, Kutryk said NASA has had a singular focus for decades, regardless of which party is in power. That focus is Mars. “NASA’s ultimate goal, through all the political administrations—and ups and downs, cancellations and new programs—has actually never changed. They’ve always been steered by one goal, and that’s still to go all the way out someday to that small little red planet—with a human.”
With that Martian goal in mind, he pointed to one major way that Canada is prepared to contribute: with a funded lunar-utility rover program that aims to bring a cargo cart to the moon for Artemis astronauts as soon as 2033. That rover could be repurposed for future Mars missions.
Alluding to exploration, however, Kutryk said the key is for multiple nations to be involved in learning more about “the next new ocean” of space, because it is a forum for discovery and innovation. Canada, he emphasized, does have a place in this new space forum.
“We would be so foolish to give up now, to say, no, we don’t want to be a part of this,” he said. “We have a lot more that we can offer as a country, and I’m confident we’ll get there as the years go by. I think if you’re a young person in Canada, as I once was—and you dream about flying in space or working in space, or seeing a Canadian flag on the moon—I think your future has never been brighter. I think this is going to happen.”
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