This Calgary-born astronaut's love for the night sky started in Kananaskis Country
Watching Roberta Bondar fly into space also inspired Jenni Gibbons to reach for the stars
Many kids around the world have dreamed of one day becoming an astronaut, but it came true for Jenni Gibbons.
The Calgary-born astronaut was the youngest ever to be chosen by the Canadian Space Agency to join their ranks in 2017, along with pilot Joshua Kutryk.
This week it was announced that Kutryk has been assigned a six-month mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025, and Gibbons will be a backup for the Artemis II mission expected to launch no earlier than November 2024.
In that mission, four astronauts — Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada's Jeremy Hansen — will orbit the moon in NASA's new Orion spacecraft and will go farther than any human has gone on a crewed space flight.
"For me, it's a privilege to be support for astronaut Jeremy Hansen for the lunar mission," Gibbons said on Thursday from the Canadian Space Agency headquarters just outside of Montreal.
"[Canada is] the only international partner assigned to the most critically important mission NASA has planned in over 50 years — human space flights return to the moon."
Gibbons says she is excited to get to work training to be a certified flight member, as well as a test subject for everything from launch to splashdown to recovery operations. She recently travelled to a crater in northern Labrador for training, since it's a certain rock similar to the moon, as part of the development of the program going forward.
Growing up in Calgary
The Calgarian's love for the stars started at an early age.
"I spent a lot of time outside growing up. I felt very fortunate to be very close to Kananaskis, and I think that was my early fascination with exploring and being outdoors and my memories of the night sky," Gibbons told CBC Calgary.
Her mom also made sure she had strong role models growing up.
"I remember my mom really emphasized when Roberta Bondar flew in space.… She made me aware that there was a Canadian woman flying in space," she said.
After watching Bondar become the first Canadian woman in space in 1992, she carefully put together a scrapbook of newspaper articles about that mission with help from her mother.
"And so I absolutely wanted to be an astronaut when I was little and when I was going through that and experiencing that mission through what Roberta shared," she said.
Gibbons says she hopes she can inspire another generation of youngsters wanting to explore the final frontier.
How her career took off
Today, Gibbons is the Canadian Space Agency's third female astronaut after Bondar and Julie Payette.
Growing up, her interest shifted to geology, then engineering. She ended up at McGill University to study engineering with a focus on combustion.
"I wanted to study science and problem solve, and I loved being creative, so that lead me to engineering," she said.
At McGill, she worked with the Canadian Space Agency to study how flames work in microgravity. At just 28 years old, her resume included mechanical engineer, combustion scientist and lecturer at Cambridge University.
Now, at age 35, she is ready to take another step. She hopes her astronaut training will also help advance medical and food security technology, since they are having to develop those aspects for the Artemis mission.
"And hopefully there are people who are excited to see where Joshua and I fit in this puzzle that is our space program and follow our missions because we absolutely want to share as much as we possibly can of what we're learning," she said.
Asked what she would do differently if she had to start her career over, she says sharing her knowledge would be more of a priority.
"I would trust myself more and share more of what I've learned with those around me," she told Universities Canada. "I've benefited enormously from mentors so far, but if I could restart my career, I would work on mentoring."
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