Canadian Astronaut Corps
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The Canadian Astronaut Corps (French: Corps canadien des astronautes) is a unit of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) that selects, trains, and provides astronauts as crew members for U.S. and Russian space missions. As of July 2026, the corps has three active members.
History
The original six astronauts selected in 1983 were under the auspices of the National Research Council of Canada. They were transferred to the Canadian Space Agency when it was established in 1989.
Since 1984, when Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space, nine CSA astronauts have flown on US NASA Space Shuttles and on Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 15 missions.
In May 2009, Robert Thirsk flew to the International Space Station (ISS) for a six-month stay, thus becoming the first Canadian to stay aboard the ISS for an extended period. On December 1, 2009, after spending 188 days in space, he returned to Earth aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, the first Canadian commander of the ISS, went on to achieve worldwide fame in 2013 for releasing a music video he recorded on the ISS of his version of David Bowie's song "Space Oddity". Astronaut Julie Payette went on to serve as the governor general of Canada, and Garneau became Minister of Foreign Affairs.
In April 2026, during the Artemis II mission, Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen became the first non-American to travel beyond low Earth orbit and to the vicinity of the Moon.
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This entry incorporates text from “Canadian Astronaut Corps” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.