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‘It is glorious,’ says astronaut Jeremy Hansen, announced as 1st Canadian to orbit the moon
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Jeremy Hansen is heading to the moon.
The 47-year old Canadian astronaut was announced today as one of four astronauts — along with Christina Koch, Victor Glover and Reid Wiseman — who will be part of NASA’s Artemis II mission.
“For me, it’s a bit unreal still,” Hansen told CBC’s Paul Hunter.
“I just want Canadians to feel that pride. I just want Canadians to realize, hey, we are up to big things here in Canada and can accomplish the seemingly impossible if we believe in ourselves.”
Hansen was one of four active Canadian astronauts that included Jennifer Sidey-Gibbons, Joshua Kutryk and David Saint-Jacques vying for a seat on the Orion spacecraft set to orbit the moon.
NASA announced the four astronauts selected for the Artemis II mission that will orbit the moon. Canadian Jeremy Hansen hopes to share his pride with Canadians after being selected as mission specialist.
Artemis I was the first test of NASA’s new mega-rocket — the Space Launch System (SLS) and its new crew capsule, Orion. Uncrewed, it launched in November on a 25-day mission around the moon that was deemed a success.
Artemis II is the second step in NASA’s mission to return astronauts to the surface of the moon.
The astronauts won’t be landing, but rather they will orbit for 10 days in the Orion spacecraft, testing key components to prepare for Artemis III that will place humans back on the moon some time in 2025 for the first time since 1972.
And, because of the orbit Orion will take, the four astronauts will travel farther than any astronauts ever have before them. With Artemis I, the Orion capsule travelled 434,523 kilometres from Earth. The farthest any other human-rated spacecraft had travelled previously was 400,171 kilometres during the Apollo 13 mission.
Canada gets a seat on Artemis II due to its contributions to Lunar Gateway, a space station that will orbit the moon. But Canada is also building a lunar rover provided by Canadensys Aerospace.
‘Makes me smile’
On Monday, Hansen noted there are two reasons a Canadian is going to the moon, adding that it “makes me smile when I say that.”
The first, he said, is American leadership, and the decision to curate an international team.
“The second reason is Canada’s can-do attitude,” he said proudly.
François-Philippe Champagne, minister of innovation, science and industry, lauded the significance of a Canadian being part of the mission. In a news release, he congratulated Hansen “for being at the forefront of one of the most ambitious human endeavours ever undertaken.”
Jeremy Hansen will join the Artemis II mission set to orbit the moon in 2024. The announcement was made Monday from NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in Houston, Texas.
“Canada’s participation in the Artemis program will spur the creation of thousands of highly skilled jobs, boost innovation and be a source of national pride for years to come,” he said.
On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Hansen “an exceptional individual.”
“He will do all Canadians proud. There’s no doubt about it.”
Representing the <a href=”https://twitter.com/csa_asc?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@csa_asc</a> on <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Artemis?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Artemis</a> II to the Moon is <a href=”https://twitter.com/Astro_Jeremy?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@Astro_Jeremy</a>, from London, Ontario. <br><br>Jeremy Hansen was a fighter pilot before joining CSA, and currently works with NASA on astronaut training and mission operations. This will be Hansen’s first mission in space. <a href=”https://t.co/zIVetAQeFE”>pic.twitter.com/zIVetAQeFE</a>
—@NASA
Patience pays off
Born and raised in southwestern Ontario, Hansen recalled in a 2014 CSA interview that he always wanted to be an astronaut.
“For as long as I can remember, I was fascinated by space exploration,” he said. “I looked at a photograph of Neil Armstrong standing on the moon, and I wanted to see what it would be like to leave this planet, to look at it from beyond.”
Now he’s getting his chance. Hansen said he found out about his role on the mission about two weeks ago. The only people he told were his wife, his children and his parents.
According to the CSA, Hansen joined the Air Cadet Program when he was 12, and then went on to study space science at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont. He eventually became a pilot, flying CF-18s in Cold Lake, Alta. He is still a colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Hansen was recruited by the CSA in 2009 along with Saint-Jacques. Since then, he has done extensive training in the High Arctic, spent six days training in a cave in Italy and another seven days 19 metres below the surface off the coast Key Largo, Fla., as part of the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO) project.
In 2016, Hansen was the voice of Capcom (a vintage term from NASA’s Mercury program days that stands for capsule communicator) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The following year, he became the first Canadian in charge of training astronauts from both Canada and the United States.
Now, Hansen will spend his time training for his mission, which involves a spacecraft no human has ever flown in before.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says Hansen will make all Canadians proud when he becomes one of a handful of people to orbit the moon.
Meta is preparing to block news for some Canadians on Facebook and Instagram in a temporary test that is expected to last the majority of the month.
The Silicon Valley tech giant is following in the steps of Google, which blocked news links for about five weeks earlier this year for some of its Canadian users in response to a controversial Liberal government bill.
Bill C-18, which is currently being studied in the Senate, will require tech giants to pay publishers for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.
Meta said it’s prepared to block news permanently on Facebook and Instagram if the bill passes, which the government said could happen this month.
Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta Canada, said this first temporary move will affect one to five per cent of its 24 million Canadian users, with the number of those impacted fluctuating throughout the test.
Randomly selected Canadian users will not be able to see or share news content in Canada either on Instagram or Facebook.
She said that could include news links to articles, reels — which are short-form videos — or stories, which are photos and videos that disappear after 24 hours.
However, the experience won’t be the same for every user who is subject to the test.
“It won’t be a uniform experience, necessarily. Some news links won’t be shareable on Facebook, but it might not be that experience on Instagram. It will be a different experience on different surfaces,” Curran said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said in a statement Thursday evening that the fact that Facebook is still refusing to work with Canadians shows how deeply irresponsible the company is.
“When a big tech company, whatever the size is, the amount of money and the powerful lawyers they have, they come here and they tell us, ‘If you don’t do this or that, then I’m pulling the plug,’ — that’s a threat and that is unacceptable,” he said in the statement.
“I never did anything because I was afraid of a threat, and I will never do it.”
Rodriguez added in a tweet that “Canadians will not be intimidated by these tactics.”
Meta said it is picking random news publishers that will be notified that some people in Canada will not be able to see or share their news content throughout the test. They will still be able to access their accounts, pages, businesses suites and advertising.
International news companies such as the New York Times or BBC could also have their content blocked in Canada during the test, if they are randomly selected. However, people outside of Canada will not be affected.
“It’s only going to impact your experience … if you’re in Canada,” Curran said.
Meta is defining news as it’s described in the Liberal government’s online news act.
“The legislation states that news outlets are in scope if they primarily report on, investigate or explain current issues or events of public interests,” said Curran.
Content that doesn’t fall under that definition will not be blocked from Canadians. When Facebook blocked news in Australia in 2021 because of a similar bill, there was widespread concern that trusted sources would be unavailable, while pages that published misinformation flourished.
Curran said affected Canadians will still be able to use their platforms to access information from a variety of sources including government pages, organizations and universities.
“We think all of that is good information. They’re also seeing and sharing things that interest them and entertain them. We would not classify that as misinformation. That’s great information and that will continue to be shared and to be viewable,” Curran said, adding that the company will continue to address misinformation on its site through a global fact-checking program.
Meta’s test is designed to ensure that non-news agencies don’t get caught in the dragnet should they block news permanently.
The company said it doesn’t want to accidentally block emergency services, community organizations, politicians or government pages, which happened in Australia.
Legacy media and broadcasters have praised the federal Liberals’ online news bill because it would bring in more money for shrinking newsrooms. Companies such as Meta and Google have been blamed for disrupting and dominating the advertising industry, eclipsing smaller, traditional players.
Curran said removing journalism from Meta’s platforms is a business decision, and the company makes “negligible amounts” of revenue from news content.
The company said less than three per cent of what people see in their Facebook feeds are posts with links to news articles, and many of its users believe that is already “too much” news.
“We’re facing a lot of competitive pressures and competition for user time and attention. We’re also facing some pretty serious economic headwinds, and a macro economic climate that’s a bit uncertain,” Curran said.
“Of course news have value from a social perspective. It’s valuable to our democracy. It just doesn’t have much commercial or economic value to our company.”
More on Canada
© 2023 The Canadian Press
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Housing affordability in Canada just saw the biggest improvement in almost 4 years – Global News
Stable interest rates and a continued cooling in home prices helped give housing affordability in Canada its biggest jump in almost four years in the first quarter of 2023, according to a new report.
On Thursday afternoon, National Bank of Canada released its quarterly housing affordability monitor, which it tracks through mortgage payments as a percentage of income (MPPI).
Mortgage payments as a percentage of income reached 60.9 per cent in the quarter, down 3.2 percentage points from the previous period and down 5.4 percentage points from recent highs. Q1’s affordability boost was the best improvement in the last 15 quarters tracked by National Bank.
Affordability was better for the second quarter in a row in Canada, according to the report. Each of the 10 markets monitored by National Bank showed improvement, the first time that’s happened in two and a half years.
National Bank noted that while there has been improvement in MPPI, it remains elevated, and has not retrenched the massive rise in unaffordability observed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Canadians looking to enter the housing market in a major urban centre now need to save an average of just over $50,000, which National Bank estimates requires 73 months of saving. The historic average since 2000 is 40.5 months of saving.
The bank cited a continuing price decline in the first quarter as helping Canadians better afford their homes. National Bank said median home prices were down for a third consecutive quarter, marking an overall decline of 7.3 per cent, which the bank called “the biggest drawdown in a generation.”
Vancouver, Toronto, and Hamilton, Ont., saw the biggest price declines and, by extension, the best improvements in affordability in the quarter. Despite the improvements, MPPI in Toronto (82.8 per cent) and Vancouver (94.9 per cent) are still well above the national baseline and the cities’ historical averages.
At the same time as the housing correction was proceeding, the Bank of Canada announced a conditional pause on interest rate hikes in the quarter, providing some relief to mortgage rates.
National Bank says that its benchmark five-year fixed rate mortgage used to calculate affordability declined 14 basis points.
Looking ahead to the rest of the current quarter, National Bank expects Canadians will continue to see relief on the interest rate side of the equation, though home prices and sales activity are beginning to tick up as buyers move off the sidelines.
The report’s authors said they have doubts about whether the price rise will be sustained, however, given the Bank of Canada policy rate’s current “restrictive” levels following a series of rate hikes in the last year.
Median household incomes were also up 1.3 per cent quarter-to-quarter, National Bank said, helping to improve the overall affordability picture for Canadians.
To learn more about how you can break into Canada’s housing market, check out Global News’ Home School series here.
© 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
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Man charged after allegedly threatening to shoot Toronto mayoral candidates, police say – CBC.ca
A man is now facing several charges, Toronto police say, after allegedly threatening to shoot mayoral candidates on Thursday, which prompted some leading contenders to pause their campaigns and was followed by the cancellation of a debate.
In a news release issued Friday, police said they were called to the area of Mortimer and Greenwood avenues in the city’s east end around 10:45 a.m. Thursday.
They said a man “entered a location,” allegedly threatened to shoot mayoral candidates and then brandished what looked to be a gun.
Toronto Police spokesperson Victor Kwong said Friday that it was a “blanket threat.”
“There was no threat specifically to one mayoral candidate over another,” Kwong told reporters.
Investigators say 29-year-old Toronto man Junior Francois Lavagesse has been charged with two counts of weapons dangerous, carrying a concealed weapon, uttering threats, and failing to comply with a recognizance.
He is due to appear in court Friday morning.
Kwong said police are also investigating online threats that investigators were made aware of Thursday.
“That is going to be a separate investigation … we do believe that it is the same person responsible,” Kwong said.
Kwong said police will not provide further details of the location where the alleged threats were reported as they were “not related to the mayoral candidates” and in effort to protect witness privacy.
Debate cancelled out of ‘abundance of caution’
The incident led several leading candidates to cancel public appearances, and a debate that was scheduled to take place at The Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD) University Thursday night was cancelled.
An OCAD spokesperson told CBC Toronto Friday that the event was cancelled “out of an abundance of caution,” after some candidates raised concerns for their safety.
Several candidates had withdrawn, including Brad Bradford, Josh Matlow and ex-police chief Mark Saunders.
Olivia Chow, Chloe Brown and Mitzie Hunter were also set to attend and Ana Bailão had previously pulled out of the debate over a scheduling conflict.
There were no reported injuries and several candidates issued statements saying they, along with their teams and families, were safe.
Meta to test blocking news on Facebook, Instagram in Canada over Bill C-18 – Global News
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