Thirsk’s many firsts

While Robert Thirsk’s young friends knew stats of their favourite hockey stars, Thirsk knew stats on American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts. He would become an astronaut who would set a number of firsts for the Canadian Space Program.

Thirsk was born on August 17, 1953, in New Westminster, B.C. As a child, he was inspired by the American space program. He would wake up early on mornings of flight launches to watch them on TV. Thirsk idolized John Glenn and Neil Armstrong, and dreamed of being an astronaut.

Thirsk moved around western Canada during his childhood, living in British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba. He credits the “pioneering spirit” in Western Canada as being a motivating factor in his life.

He completed his first university degree at the University of Calgary in mechanical engineering in 1976. Before he finished his studies there, a professor advised him to consider obtaining further engineering degrees or a medical degree.

Thirsk took that advice. He enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology near Boston, and graduated in 1978 with a master of science in mechanical engineering, before obtaining a medical degree from McGill University in Montreal.

Several years later, he would return to Boston and complete a master of business administration degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Thirsk was in a family medicine residency program in Montreal when he spotted an ad in the newspaper for the Canadian Astronaut Program in the summer of 1983. The ad described ideal qualifications for new astronauts, and Thirsk thought he fit the profile.

His childhood dreams of going into space came rushing back. He submitted his application the next day, and was one of six new astronauts selected to the program in December 1983. Thirsk began training in February of the next year.

In October 1984, he served as backup payload specialist for Canadian Marc Garneau on the NASA Challenger mission, the first time a Canadian would go into space.

Thirsk went into space for the first time on June 20, 1996, as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Columbia. He performed experiments investigating changes in plants, animals and humans in space during the 17-day mission.

In 1998, Thirsk moved to Houston, Texas, to start mission specialist training with NASA. Here, he received instruction on the shuttle and space station, spacewalking, operation of robotics, and the Russian language.

He moved on to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow in 2004, where he earned his Soyuz spacecraft certification.

By 2007, Thirsk was on to Germany to have European capsule communicator training with the European Space Agency’s Columbus Control Centre.

He was assigned last year to the crew of Expedition 20, the twentieth crew to visit the International Space Station, a mission that ended with his safe landing on Tuesday.

The mission marked several new firsts for a Canadian astronaut: first Canadian to launch into space from Kazakhstan, first Canadian flight engineer on a Soyuz crew, and first Canadian to live in space for six months.