Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen says moon mission was worth missing gravity

Jeremy Hansen laughed off the question of what he missed most about gravity, answering “nothing” and adding that while microgravity is harder in some respects, “it’s just so worth it.” The line landed after nearly 10 days in Orion, a stretch that showed how much long-duration spaceflight depends on astronauts adapting to motion, work and decision-making without the comfort of Earth’s pull.

Hansen’s answer carried extra weight because the mission already placed him in Canadian space history. He became the first Canadian to go on a mission around the Moon, flying aboard Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the Moon since 1972. The four-person crew of Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Hansen splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on April 10, 2026, ending a test flight that NASA described as a record-setting return for the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century.

NASA said Artemis II was the agency’s first crewed test flight in the Artemis campaign, built to confirm Orion’s systems in the deep-space environment and prepare for Artemis III and beyond. During the flight, the spacecraft tested life support, communication, navigation, manual piloting and proximity operations. At one point, Orion briefly flew beyond the range of GPS and NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, a reminder that the mission was as much about proving systems as it was about reaching lunar distance.

The flight also pushed farther from home than any human crew before it, surpassing Apollo 13’s distance-from-Earth record on April 6, 2026. NASA said the crew covered more than 800,000 kilometres during the mission. For Hansen, that history was bound up with the practical realities of microgravity, where every movement, every procedure and every hour spent inside the spacecraft had to be managed with precision.

After the splashdown, CBS Mornings brought the Artemis II crew back into view in a town hall that included questions from students and appearances by special guests. For Hansen, the simplest answer remained the most revealing: gravity was not what he missed. The mission, and the work ahead for Artemis, made that absence worth it.