Which astronaut is Canadian?

The Canadian Space Agency held its first astronaut selection in 1983 and chose six people. From that group came Marc Garneau, who flew as a payload specialist on the Space Shuttle Challenger's STS-41-G mission in October 1984 and became the first Canadian in space. Years later he would leave the agency to go into politics.

Roberta Bondar, a neurologist from the same group, flew in 1992 aboard Discovery and was the first Canadian woman in orbit, as well as the first neurologist to fly on a space mission. Steve MacLean, Bjarni Tryggvason and Ken Money completed that first class.

The 1992 selection included, among others, Chris Hadfield, Julie Payette and Dave Williams. Hadfield is probably the best-known Canadian astronaut: he flew on two Space Shuttle missions, was the first Canadian to perform a spacewalk and, in 2013, the first to take command of the International Space Station, during Expedition 35. Julie Payette flew twice and later became Governor General of Canada.

The 2009 class selected Jeremy Hansen and David Saint-Jacques. Saint-Jacques spent a little over six months on the station between 2018 and 2019. Hansen is assigned as a mission specialist on Artemis II, the program's first crewed flight around the Moon, which will make him the first non-American to travel to the lunar environment. Canada's contribution to the program centers, as on the station, on robotics: the Canadarm and its successor Canadarm2 are the country's historic contribution to crewed spaceflight.