How a Canadian prepares for a stint on the ISS

Jordan Heath-Rawlings On Thursday, Russian president Vladimir Putin vowed his war against Ukraine would not stop until he had total control of the region and in the United States, Congress was busy trying to find last ditch ways to help Ukraine against Putin and Russia high above it all. Meanwhile, Russians and Americans and other nationalities, including soon a Canadian just worked together. No wars, no accusations, no threats as the globe becomes increasingly fractured and dangerous. The International Space Station and the quest for the Stars in general becomes one of the last nonpolitical endeavors left. While Canada may be criticized for its minimal defense budget, for its lack of effectiveness and foreign policy and other earthly political failings and space, we punch above our weight. We always have. In the next couple of years, we’re about to land some big blows in the name of Universal Wonder. Today we speak to a Canadian astronaut about the future of space exploration and his upcoming trip to the International Space Station.

I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is the big story. Josh Kutryk is a Canadian astronaut, an engineer and a pilot. And in 2025, an occupant on the International Space Station. Hello, Josh.

Josh Kutryk Good morning.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Can you start maybe, because I imagine it was a pretty exciting moment by taking us back to the moment where you learned that you would be going on this mission, going to space for the first time. Take us there. Who told you? What was it like? What was your reaction?

Josh Kutryk The Space Agency told me, I guess actually quite a while ago, a number of months ago now. For me, I mean it’s a little bit of a mix because on one hand this is something I’ve been dreaming about for a long, long time, exploring space, going to space, exploring really, and so it’s very fulfilling every time we take a big step closer to that. At the same time though, I’ve been preparing, I’ve been training for years. I mean, I moved to Houston in 2017, so in some ways a lot has changed In other ways, not a lot has changed, but it always feels, I say first and foremost, exciting and then also proud to be Canadian, proud to be wearing the red maple leaf. I still think it’s remarkable that our little country plays such a role in these big expeditions.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What does that prep look like? You mentioned you’ve been preparing since 2017. Give us a little bit of a sense of what you have to do to get yourself chosen for one of these missions.

Josh Kutryk I mean, to back it all the way up, of course you have to be selected initially by the Canadian space industry for the job, and that’s a very rigorous process. Takes place over the course of about 12 months, 12 months of testing, having a look at you in every way possible and having a look at your background and everything you’ve done in your life professionally and personally as well. I would say I did that selection twice. Once in oh eight and nine when I was not selected. And then I tried again in 16 and I was selected with Jenny. So it started there. Jenny and I moved to Houston Johnson Space Center and we basically go back to school. We did three years of in-depth training as a student to earn the qualification of basically a certified NASA astronaut. So that’s three years. Then we continue to train, but we start to mix it in with more technical work jobs that are done by astronauts at the Johnson Space Center. And it’s sort of a mix of on-the-job training and technical training continued. And then you get to this phase where I’m at where you go back to training full-time and now it’s specific training specific for the mission that we’re going to be doing. So in my case, training specifically related to the Starliner one vehicle, which will be operating for its first long duration mission, and then all the technical science training related to running, operating, and conducting research on the International Space Station. A lot of training though, it’s basically about four or five years worth.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You mentioned you’ve been dreaming of exploring and exploring space specifically for a long time. I know you come from a cattle farm in Alberta. Do you remember dreaming about going to space back then and how does somebody from a small cattle farm in Alberta end up on the International Space Station?

Josh Kutryk I do remember. I remember wanting to do this my entire life. I couldn’t even tell you when exactly it started. Some of my earliest memories are just always of being curious. The night sky in Alberta is still one of my most favorite things to look at out away from the city. It’s awe inspiring. It was for me as a child, it still is. And so I remember being very curious about that. I’ve always been very enthusiastic, fascinated by this idea of exploring. So exploring oceans, exploring the north and south poles, exploring aerospace, and now of course exploring space. I always had those two elements as a passion. I would say. I remember one of my earliest probably space memories was seeing images from the Voyager probe come back. This is in the eighties, and of course that one has gone all the way out of the solar system, but seeing images come back with another world motivated me, fed into that passion and it started. It is something I’ve thought about my whole life.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings What exactly will you be doing on this mission, first of all in getting up there, but secondly, you’re going to spend six months on the ISS. While you’re there, what kind of tasks do you do? Are you just doing maintenance all day to keep it working or are you doing research as well? Give me a sense of what this mission is all about.

Josh Kutryk So the mission itself is a long duration exploration science mission. It’s six months in microgravity, and if we wanted to split it into two main categories, I’m getting ready to do scientific research that can only be done in the environment of space. It’ll be scientific experiments, research done on behalf of investigators, professors, scientists from across Canada, but also from around the world. And so of course there’s a lot of training that goes into that. We have to learn the science, we have to learn how to do it on their behalf. The second element though is as you alluded to, it’s operating the station itself. This is a ginormous machine. It’s the size of a football field. It’s immensely complicated to me, probably one of the most complex systems humanity has ever built. And we have to be experts in that in everything and the plumbing, the electric, the power generation, we have to be able to operate it, fix it, replace parts, go outside the station, do spacewalk, all of that. So it’s kind of a time split between scientific research, demoing new technologies, and then just running the place, operating the station and all of its systems.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You mentioned you’re going up on the Starliner one. I think that that’s its first voyage in this capacity. First of all, what’s unique about this ship, what’s important about it? But second of all, any trepidation about being one of the first to use a new ship that’s never gone this far before?

Josh Kutryk So I would start by saying that I feel immensely grateful to have the opportunity. I’m right where I want to be personally. And I also think as a space agency, as a country, we’re right where we want to be, which is on the very leading edge. To back it up a little bit, Starliner is one of two vehicles that have been built by commercial companies in the US as part of an effort to commercialize lower Earth orbit. The first was SpaceX. They’ve been flying for a few years with Dragon. This is built by Boeing. It’s a few years later in development. So it has not flown with crew yet. It’s supposed to do a short couple day long test flight here in April of 2024. And if that goes well, then our crew would take it on the first expedition, the first operational flight to the Space station for six months and back.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings So a lot of our effort is centered on that. A lot of our job is all about Starliner. It’s about getting the vehicle ready to fly this first long duration expedition, and it’s about getting ourselves familiar with the vehicle and ready to operate it. But for me, as someone who comes from a test pilot background, I love that. It’s my passion. I feel very grateful to have the opportunity. And the second part of your question about the risk, of course, that is the guiding challenge. That’s what defines our jobs as astronauts. It’s to manage that risk and prepare and to mitigate it. And of course it’s not trivial. Space flight is still extremely risky and extremely dangerous. And to do it on a vehicle that still hasn’t flown with crew, of course is even more. But I would tell you that for myself and the other crew mates who will be be in that vehicle with me, that’s something we’re passionate about.

Josh Kutryk This is what we like to do and we look forward to doing it. And I know that you had a third element in your question there, which was what makes this unique? A couple things. It’s brand new. It can do some pretty neat things in orbit that other spacecraft can’t do. It’s also the first one that’s going to land on land. So Dragon and the moon ship Orion, they splash down in the water. We’re going to land on land in the desert of New Mexico using a pretty neat system of parachutes and giant airbags actually, which is a challenge, but it’s a good step forward. It opens up a lot of possibility and flexibility if you have a spacecraft from an operational point of view that you can land where you want to on firm soil instead of the ocean.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings When you get to the ISS, obviously you’ve got a mission to do. You’ve got the maintenance work to do as we discussed, but how do you prepare mentally for spending six months? You mentioned it’s huge. It’s the size of a football field that’s still not very big. If it’s your world for half a year, what kind of mental preparations does the space agency have you do? What kind of training do you get in that area?

Josh Kutryk Yeah, it’s a really good question. I’m glad you asked because a lot of times people don’t think about that. And from the point of view of preparing people to go there, that’s one of our bigger challenges I would say. And just for context, maybe the space station itself, size of football field, most of that is mechanical structure. Solar panels, for example, the pressurized volume, the living quarters per se, where the crew lives eats does science all day. You’d probably want to think about the first story floor in a modern, average sized house, say in Toronto. And it’s all of course closed spaces. It’s like living in tubes. So you’re going to live in very close quarters with people. There’s not a lot of windows you can’t leave. If you get upset with your friends or if there’s interpersonal conflicts, there’s nowhere to go. You have to deal with it.

And of course there’s the mental aspect of leaving the planet. I mean, I have deployed in the military a number of times. I’ve gone to austere places for six or seven months at a time, but this is going to be a little bit different. We’re leaving the planet, we’re going to look back and see planet earth, and there’s no way to come home to it until the end of the mission. So the mental aspect is certainly a big challenge. How do we prepare? So we try to spend a lot of time in space analog environments. And I’ll give you one example. I spent three weeks a little while ago, underground Europe, several hundred meters under the surface in a cave system that is relatively unexplored. I was with a crew of international astronauts and we were doing science biology for principal investigators from Europe. We were mapping the cave, so exploring it, but we were really just living, we were just living in an environment that is extremely high risk, high consequence, where there’s no margin for air, for mistakes. And so we do that. We go into places like that. We use the ocean floor underwater as another example, and we just try to get used to that idea of living in extreme isolation, in living in environments. Characterized, like I said, by a high risk, high consequence where you can’t make a mistake and where you have to function at a very high level from a teamwork capacity with whoever it is that you’re there with.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings You mentioned interpersonal relations, and one of the dynamics I am fascinated by is the ISS is probably now the lone place where American and Canadian and Russian scientists are working together, working to keep each other alive, given all the geopolitical tensions in the world right now. What’s that like? What do they tell you about that and what are you expecting or have you heard from other astronauts?

Josh Kutryk It is a challenging landscape. Geopolitically, of course, in the world right now. We are still getting the job done in orbit, and I would tell you that from an operator perspective, Canadian Space Agency, its partners, nasa, yes, Russia, several European countries, Japan. We all remain very determined, I guess, and committed to maintaining and operating this outpost, the space station as safely and effectively as we can. And we have that as a guiding principle that has so far overwritten all the geopolitical concerns we have here on Earth. And that principle is to keep it going and to prioritize above all else the safety of the station, the safety of the astronauts who are living there regardless of where they come from. And so far that has carried us. And personally, I’m grateful for that of course. But I would also say I hope that we’re all grateful for it.

I mean, the space station is one of a kind thing. It has only been built because we were able to do it with international collaboration, otherwise it wouldn’t exist. And we should be grateful for the fact that we did that. We have it because it is a laboratory. It’s a place where we can do science that we cannot do anywhere else. It has delivered to us, and I’m using us in the biggest sense of the word, the world. It’s delivered to us scientific discovery and research, new technologies that have made life better for millions of people, and we wouldn’t have that if we didn’t do it. So I’m grateful for the fact that we’re still going, we’re still prioritizing it. We’re still using that principle of assuring above all else, that it remains a safe place to do research and technology development. To me, it’s like a beacon of hope of positivity. We get drowned out sometimes in the negativity down here, but it’s inspiring to me even as an astronaut to look up and see that despite all the chaos down here, we have this amazing demonstration of human cooperation and persistence flying around at tens of thousands of miles an hour, and we did this as an effort from all around the world. I think it’s awesome, and I hope it inspires us to do it again in the future.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings In terms of our own space program, you’ve mentioned a couple times that we’re kind of punching above our weight when it comes to sending astronauts and developing technology and making contributions. What do you see in the future? I mean, your colleague is already going to go around the moon. Your colleague is backing him up and you’re going to the ISS. Where do you realistically see Canadians going in space during our lifetimes?

Josh Kutryk Well, it’s a certainty now. It appears that we’re going to the moon, and for me as a nevermind, as an astronaut, but just as a Canadian, that’s a point of extreme pride. As you mentioned, we have always been there on the very leading edge with NASA of some of the most adventurous and difficult exploration missions that human’s ever done. We were a prime partner when we had this idea on a whiteboard of building an international space station back more than two decades ago. We are still a prime partner on that. I mean, Canada’s contributions, the robotic technology we’ve invented, innovated in this country is unique in the world. It put the station together. The station depends on that, depends on Canada. Every single day, we’re right in the middle of the critical path with low earth orbit. And to your question, we’re also now right on the critical path to humanity’s return to the moon.

We’re building the robotic systems that will put the gateway space station together in lunar orbit. And because of that contribution, because of what we’re developing, yes, Jeremy’s flying back to the moon on Artemis two, which if you step back and think about it, is amazing. I mean, this is the first time anyone’s gone back to the moon. Since Apollo, it’s the first time anyone from the world will go to the who’s not a United States citizen, and from the whole world, it’s Canada that’s taking that seat. So where’s it going to go? NASA’s ultimate objective is Mars. And I think that that’s on the horizon. If we do everything just right, if we make the right decisions and prioritize the right things, that’s something that’s in the cards for the next generation. And yeah, I’m anxious to see it all happen.

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Josh, thank you so much for this and best of luck preparing and then going to space.

Josh Kutryk Pleasure to talk about space always. So thanks for having us

Jordan Heath-Rawlings Canadian astronaut, Josh Kutryk. That was the big story. For more from us, head to thebigstorypodcast.ca. Starting next week. We have a little treat for you before the end of the year. This episode was a little taste of it next week, our last year of new episodes until 2024 is full of good news. That’s it. Just good news, no wars, no threats, no climate disaster, nothing. Just things that you may not know but mean that we are not headed for the edge of a cliff yet. You can find the big story wherever you get your podcast. If you want to talk to us, you know how to do it by now. You can head to @thebigstoryfpn on Twitter. You can email us, hello@thebigstorypodcast.ca, and of course you can call 4 1 6 9 3 5 5 9 3 5.

Joseph Fish is the lead producer of the Big story. Robyn Simon is also a producer on this program. Mary Jubran is our digital editor. Diana Keay is our manager of business development. Stefanie Phillips is our showrunner. Mark Angly and Christian Proholm handled our sound design this week. I am your host and executive producer, Jordan Heath-Rawlings. We have in this economy for you tomorrow, a very appropriate episode for the holiday spending season about how to live with debt since these days. It’s impossible to live without it. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back with a big story on Monday.

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