Pondering riding rockets is a challenge? Try a horse.
Canadian Artemis 2 moon astronaut Jeremy Hansen, partnering along with his borrowed horse Cisco, pretended to be a cowboy at Canada’s Calgary Stampede fair last week within the western province of Alberta. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, who flew on the space shuttle Columbia in 1986 while a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, also visited the event.
“Thrilled to be on the Calgary Stampede, celebrating the spirit of exploration and adventure,” Nelson wrote in a tweet on Saturday (July 8) showing him and Jeremy Hansen standing together in flight suits and adorned with cowboy hats. The 2 got here together to “embrace the pioneering nature of space travel,” he added.
Hansen was named to the Artemis 2 moon mission in April to honor Canada’s commitment to contribute the robotic Canadarm3 to NASA’s future Gateway space station. Artemis 2 will launch on its round-the-moon mission no sooner than November 2024. Hansen shall be joined by three NASA astronauts on the flight, which is able to make the him the primary non-American ever to depart Earth orbit.
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Hansen, who has limited experience with horses, practiced with Cisco before riding through the streets of Calgary as parade marshal for the Calgary Stampede. Versions of the stampede have run since 1886, celebrating cowboy culture and community. Today it attracts greater than one million attendees annually during every week of events in July.
I opened the @calgarystampede parade this morning. Thanks to everyone involved on this event and to your trust as I took on this meaningful role. pic.twitter.com/FcKINQF6guJuly 7, 2023
Colonial expansion into the American and Canadian west uprooted, killed and marginalized Native Americans and Indigenous peoples, nevertheless, which the Stampede now seeks to acknowledge. Hansen, for instance, also took time to go to Elbow River Camp, an Indigenous presentation of 26 tipis on the Stampede site.
Hansen has also worked frequently with Indigenous, Métis, Inuit and First Nations people of Canada for several years, most recently collaborating in a vision quest this spring at Turtle Lodge in Manitoba on the lands of the Sagkeeng First Nation (also generally known as Fort Alexander).
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NASA and Canada have been working as partners because the dawn of the space age. For instance, a NASA rocket launched Alouette, the primary Canadian satellite, in 1962. The Canadarm robotic arm for NASA’s space shuttle allowed Canadians to start flying in space in 1984, while Canadarm2 opened the door for International Space Station (ISS) assignments.
Canadians have also played key roles as NASA contractors and employees for a long time. Engineers from a canceled Canadian jet program, the Avro Arrow, contributed to early spaceflight programs at NASA starting in 1959 (including the Apollo moon landings).
Canadian “legs” from the corporate Devtek (today’s Héroux-Devtek) flew aboard the Apollo moon landers between 1968 and 1972, and dual U.S.-Canadian NASA astronaut Andrew Feustel commanded the ISS in 2018, amongst other milestones.