As children across Canada and the US prepare to start back to school after the summer holidays, so too are a couple of very special Canadians.
They are starting astronaut school this week at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
Joshua Kutryk of the central prairie province of Saskatchewan and Jenni Sidey of the western prairie province of Alberta are Canada’s newest candidates for an eventual space mission.
LCol. Kutryk is a fighter pilot, test-pilot, and instructor with the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 2012, LCol Kutryk received the prestigious Liethen-Tittle Award from the United States Air Force for being their top test pilot graduate, an award also presented to Colonel Chris Hadfield in 1988, himself a former Canadian astronaut and a commander of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013.
Jennifer Sidey is a PhD in engineering, specializing in combustion and a university instructor. For her outreach work in promoting science and technology to young women and girls, she was awarded the prestigious Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Young Woman Engineer of the Year Award and a RAEng Young Engineer of the Year Award in 2016.
LCol. Kutryk is a fighter pilot, test-pilot, and instructor with the Royal Canadian Air Force. In 2012, LCol Kutryk received the prestigious Liethen-Tittle Award from the United States Air Force for being their top test pilot graduate, an award also presented to Colonel Chris Hadfield in 1988, himself a former Canadian astronaut and a commander of the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013.
Jennifer Sidey is a PhD in engineering, specializing in combustion and a university instructor. For her outreach work in promoting science and technology to young women and girls, she was awarded the prestigious Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Young Woman Engineer of the Year Award and a RAEng Young Engineer of the Year Award in 2016.
They were chosen from among the original 3,772 Canadians who responded to the Canadian Space Agency call for astronaut candidates.
Both were recruited by the Canadian Space Agency as astronaut candidates in July of 2017 following a year-long selection process and will now join the NASA astronaut class of 2017.
The two Canadian astronauts candidates will take part in a conversation on Tuesday August 22 with astronauts currently aboard the ISS on which will be broadcast live on NASA TV
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