KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA – Canadian Space Agency (CSA) astronaut and test pilot Joshua Kutryk says he is grateful for his time on the Boeing Starliner program and that his “training is mostly done” for a future International Space Station (ISS) opportunity.
Aside from engagement work on the Artemis 2 Moon mission with CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen – Kutryk met with SpaceQ for an interview here on Monday (March 30) ahead of the launch as early as April 1 – Kutryk says he is “happily in a good position” with ISS training after almost four years of work.
Kutryk was assigned to the NASA Starliner-1 mission, which was supposed to fly this year as Canada’s next ISS mission since CSA astronaut David Saint-Jacques’ slot in 2018-19. The Starliner-1 mission is now an uncrewed mission following numerous issues with the Boeing Starliner Crew Flight Test of 2024-25. Kutryk’s next role has yet to be announced.
These days, he said, “I do a lot of refresher exercises. Every two or three months I’ll do a full day of robotic tracking capture. I’ll go to the NBL [Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory] and I’ll do a full simulated spacewalk day. I fly a lot still, but most of it is [sort of] feels like the final preparatory stages. It’s review. It’s rehearsal. It feels very good to be there.
“And then, of course,” he continued, “I’m so grateful for my experience in the years I’ve spent working on Boeing and with Starliner, professionally, because they had a lot of test pilot astronauts. It’s been a very fulfilling couple of years … my own observations is that time goes really, really fast in this job. Because we deal with projects that are really complex, and take years. And yeah, so you know, you talk about just this mission. We’re here to support Artemis, too. It feels like we’ve been talking about a long time. We have. It takes a lot of time. But on that question about my own career today? It’s been a tremendous experience. I’m very, very lucky for it.”
‘A remarkable remarkableness’
Artemis 2, Kutryk emphasized, is a representation of Canadian know-how – and reward for decades of hard work. “It is a tremendous accomplishment for Canada. I know you’ve heard this, but the people can’t hear this enough. I’ll say it again, just to point out a remarkable remarkableness of this situation – which is that the first time anyone’s going back to the Moon since Apollo 17 has a Canadian on it, which is to say that the first non-American to go into deep space is a Canadian … I would want to point out that we’ve already leveraged a lot of what we do in Canada here, with SLS [the Space Launch System rocket ] standing outside, ready to go, and a Canadian seat on it.
“I mean, that’s not a coincidence. It’s because of strategic investment over decades in Canadian aerospace, science and technology, and Canadian space agencies at work. We’ve done a good job, and I hope that people see what’s happening this week as sort of a reward for that. As testament to just what Canada can do, and how good Canada is in some of these niches that NASA values – like exploration, and more specifically, like robotics.”
Canada is famous for its robotics, including the Canadarm3 program that in large part paid for Canada’s seat and science aboard Artemis 2 – alongside other CSA investments in lunar exploration. Previous generations of Canada funded space shuttle and ISS missions; as Canadarm2, Dextre and other robotics remain active aboard ISS they continue to play key roles in enabling mission opportunities like Kutryk’s forthcoming station mission.
But speaking of that program, CSA’s Mathieu Caron – director of astronauts, life sciences and space medicine – explained in a different exclusive SpaceQ interview Monday (March 30) that CSA is engaged on work with the lunar utility rover; Caron used the rover as an example of how Canada can leverage its investments in other directions beyond robotics. NASA announced last week it would pause the Gateway space station – which had Canadarm3 manifested to be on board – to shift into lunar base operations. Caron said such program changes are common with large programs and Canada is a flexible partner, capable of adapting to these changes as they occur.
Speaking more generally, Kutryk said space programs are “enormously complex, and they span governments and budgets, and they take place in a world it’s never been more clear as it is today that a world full of competing important priorities. So, we’ve always tried to be not just a good partner, but the best partner that NASA can have, and I think being flexible is a part of that.”
He added: “I do think that NASA values that. It’s not the most important thing we contribute, but it’s an importantly, uniquely Canadian aspect.”