MONTREAL – Unless Canada makes a lot more contributions to the International Space Station, it could be a while before another Canadian astronaut visits the giant orbiting space laboratory.
For the moment, what’s clear is that no Canadians will be heading up to the space station before 2017 – at the earliest.
“We’ve kind of booked up the flights through the end of 2016,” NASA’s chief astronaut Bob Behnken said in an interview from Houston.
Right now, Canada is not even in a position to get a spot for one of its two active astronauts to take part in a mission.
Under a bartering system, it collects “credits” based on its contributions to the development of the space station, with the credits traded in for trips by astronauts.
But Behnken says Canada used up most of them for Chris Hadfield’s five-month visit which ended in May 2013.
“They (Canadians) have another opportunity that’s projected, but not out until the 2019-2020 time frame, just depending on how the balance of contributions works out.” Behnken said.
“So if they wanted to fly more often, they unfortunately would have to contribute more to the space station.”
The NASA astronaut was involved in two space station assembly missions in 2008 and 2010 and he made the trips on the now-retired U.S. Space Shuttle Endeavour.
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Behnken, who has also served as chief of NASA’s space station operations branch, operated Canadarm2 and the Canadian-built DEXTRE robot on the space lab.
When the Canadian Space Agency was contacted recently, it had nothing new to add to what CSA President Walt Natynczyk said in April about the next space trip by a Canadian.
“We’re working with the international community or the partnership with the International Space Station to see when is the next opportunity that we can get one or both of our astronauts into space,” Natynczyk said on April 20.
“I wouldn’t want to speculate on any time, but rather work bilaterally with NASA and then multilaterally with the other partners,” he told The Canadian Press.
Meantime, Canada’s two astronauts, David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen, continue their training.
In September, Hansen will take part in NEEMO 19, an underwater mission that closely resembles a space environment. He ‘ll be on a team of engineers, scientists and astronauts who will spend seven days under 19 metres of water in “Aquarius”, the world’s only undersea research station.
NEEMO stands for NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations.
Saint-Jacques took part in a similar NEEMO mission off Key Largo in the Florida Keys in 2011.
Former Canadian astronaut Marc Garneau points out that since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011, trips to the giant laboratory in the sky are less frequent.
“That was a source of flights for Canadians and because we did very well, we were quite often chosen to go on flights of the shuttle,” he said in a recent interview.
“We now have to wait beyond the Americans, Europeans, Japanese, Russians and wait until our next turn occurs,” the astronaut-turned Liberal MP said in a recent interview.
“And, as a result of that, it’s going to be a while before we see another Canadian go up to the International Space Station.”
But Garneau remained hopeful that Canada could partner with other programs from other space agencies to get its astronauts “back up there.”
“After a big high like Chris Hadfield’s flight, people are saying: ‘well, what’s next?’ and it’s a little hard for us to wait, but if people are patient, I think they’ll see that we’re going to get back there – eventually.”
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