Canada picks its next astronaut to go to the International Space Station

Astronaut David Saint-Jacques will be the next member of the Canadian Space Agency to go into space. Navdeep Bains, Canada’s minister of innovation, science, and economic development, announced today that Saint-Jacques will travel to the International Space Station in November of 2018. He’ll launch aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, becoming a member of an international crew of team members called Expedition 58/59.

Saint-Jacques and fellow CSA astronaut Jeremy Hansen have been training to go to space for the past seven years. Hansen will get to travel to space as well, but he’ll have to wait a little bit longer for a ride to the ISS. His trip will occur by 2024, according to Canada’s industry minister, James Moore.

So far, eight members of the Canadian Space Agency have gone into space, six of whom have traveled to the ISS. The last Canadian Space Agency astronaut to go to space was Chris Hadfield, who lived on the station from December 2012 to March 2013. You may remember him as the astronaut who was blinded by a solution in his helmet during a spacewalk. Or you may remember him as the astronaut who played David Bowie’s “A Space Oddity” in microgravity.