A Canadian in Space

Earlier this summer, Jameel Janjua travelled where few people have gone before when he became the first Canadian to fly a commercial space flight. A pilot with Virgin Galactic, Janjua is part of a push toward a new era of extra-terrestrial travel that is, yes, sending billionaires into space, but also supporting valuable scientific research. Janjua is a decorated fighter pilot who made it to the finals of the Canadian Space Agency’s application process (twice) before getting cut. Now he’s the 10th Canadian astronaut to launch into space. Here, he describes how he got the gig, what his first mission was like, and the text he got from his friend (and childhood hero) Chris Hadfield after landing.

I understand you had a poster of Chris Hadfield on your wall as a kid. Did you always dream of going to space?

It started pretty early. Every summer my dad used to take my brother and me to the Red Deer Regional Airshow at an old Royal Canadian Air Force base, which was about 90 minutes from our house in southern Calgary. I vividly remember watching the F-18 do its demo and thinking to myself, I’m going to do that. Of course I didn’t really know how, or what was required to actually be a fighter pilot. 

Right. Because a lot of kids think, Wow, rocket ships! I want to be an astronaut. But very few end up in space. What do you see as your differentiating factor?

I stuck it out through the parts that aren’t so “cool,” although they were always cool to me. You see fighter pilots in a movie and you go, That’s so cool and awesome. But what you don’t see is Tom Cruise studying behind a desk. The countless hours I spent buried in a massive book would astound anyone. I completed my undergraduate degree in chemical materials at the Royal Military College of Canada, which led to a scholarship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a master’s in aeronautics and astronautics. After that, I returned to the Royal Canadian Air Force and did an exchange with the U.K.’s Royal Air Force, where I served in combat in Afghanistan and Libya. From there, I moved to the U.S. for another exchange, this time as a test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base. It was during that period that I applied for the job at Virgin Galactic.

How does that happen? I’m assuming they don’t advertise for astronauts in the help-wanted section. 

I did respond to a job posting. It’s a funny story, though. I was at Edwards and had recently received clearance to fly F-16s. I was up in the air, about to land, when I saw a streak in the sky. I initially thought it was an F-22, since they often fly at high altitudes. But it turned out to be a Virgin Galactic test mission—one of the early flights of the Unity, the very ship I would later pilot. I started paying attention to the company. Then, when they were hiring in 2020, I was ready. 

Fast forward four years and you were co-piloting your own Virgin Galactic journey into space. Can you set the scene?

We were flying on the Unity 7, which is a VSS-class spacecraft, with a crew that included me, our mission commander, Nicola Pecile, and four passengers. The mission lasted just over an hour from takeoff to landing back on Earth, and it was an experience beyond words. I spent thousands of hours in a simulator preparing for this moment, but the training doesn’t compare to the real thing. The speed is mind-blowing, even for someone like me who’s spent a career piloting the fastest planes in the world. You feel the velocity deep in your gut. But what stands out the most are the views once we’re in space. We took pictures, but they can’t do the scenery justice. We’ve all seen blue and green before, but up there, it’s something entirely different.

I want to ask about the vehicle you flew in. From what I understand, there is a mommy ship and a baby ship?

Ha! That’s it. The two ships are mated at takeoff: two other pilots fly the mothership, and we fly attached to it for about 45 minutes. The mothership looks like a typical large airliner as it goes down a runway. It climbs to 45,000 feet, at which point our much smaller spaceship is released. When that happens, our mission commander says, “Fire.”

Not “blast-off”?

No, it’s “fire.” I then activate the rocket motor and say “fire” back to confirm that I’ve done it. And then, eight seconds later, we’re going faster than the speed of sound. We tilt the aircraft to point straight up and, after about a minute, we’re 50 miles above the Earth’s surface. This part of the trip lasts around 20 minutes, with about five of those in high-quality microgravity, which just means the purest experience of uninterrupted weightlessness. 

Does everybody take their seatbelts off? 

Once we hit Mach 3, which is three times the speed of sound, Nicola gives the command for everyone to unstrap. Our passengers included a Turkish scientist-astronaut and three private astronauts: an Israeli-American, an American of Indian descent and an Italian who lives in the U.K. They mostly spent their time gazing out into space, but at one point I looked in my rearview mirror and saw they were all holding hands in a circle, which was touching to see. 

But you don’t get to unstrap? 

Nicola and I have a job to do—flying the spaceship—so we stay strapped in. But at one point, I lifted my hand off my checklist and suddenly it was just floating, twirling on its own. It was one of those awe-inspiring moments, the kind that takes you back to the sense of wonder you felt as a child.

Space tourism is still a relatively new industry. Why should regular people be excited about it? 

We avoid using the term "space tourism" because it can give the wrong impression about our actual goal with commercial space exploration, which is to increase human access to space for a variety of purposes. The awesome experience is certainly part of it, but we’re also making contributions to academia and industry. Take our Unity 7 mission as an example. We gave three private citizens an incredible experience in space, but we also carried out experiments on board for Purdue and UC Berkeley that required high-quality microgravity. And we had a scientist-astronaut named Tuva Cihangir Atasever who was conducting his own research on the ship. He’d undergone all the training but he wasn’t going to get to space through a government-sponsored program.

That is true of me as well: I applied to the Canadian Space Agency twice, came very close, but didn’t make it. At one point, I thought my dream of going to space was never going to happen—and then this opportunity to fly with Virgin Galactic came up. My parents came to Canada from East Africa and, because of the commercial space industry, their son became the 10th Canadian ever to fly in space. 

And here I thought it was just a bunch of wealthy tech bros getting their kicks in space. 

I know that is a criticism you hear, but it’s definitely not true. Just recently Virgin announced an upcoming mission in partnership with the International Institute for Astronautical Sciences, where Canadian doctor Shawna Pandya will be part of the crew conducting research. As for the cost, consider how Charles Lindbergh flew the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic in 1927. It initially opened up commercial aviation to a limited group. But nearly a century later, air travel has become reasonably affordable—not for everyone, but no longer just for the extremely wealthy. I think space travel could follow a similar path. I’m just not sure what the timeline would look like. 

Will my great-great grandchildren go to Mars or the moon the way I go to Orlando? 

I don’t know if it will become that casual, but certainly the idea of humans inhabiting these places is a possibility. The demand we’re seeing right now far exceeds what existing companies can provide. My hope is that supply will grow significantly and more people will have access to space.

There is obviously a significant amount of risk involved in what you do. How does it compare to, say, flying combat missions in Afghanistan and Libya? 

I don’t really dwell on risks when I’m flying. The extensive training we undergo—the thousands of hours in the flight simulator—prepares us to handle anything that could go wrong. We build the skills needed to manage any risks that come with flying these vehicles. It’s like watching LeBron James or Wayne Gretzky lift a trophy; what you don’t see are the countless hours they put in behind the scenes. For us, those hours are what ensure our safety.

That makes sense, but LeBron James isn’t worried that the court is going to explode.

Safety is at the heart of everything we do. I want kids from all over Canada, or kids who move here from around the world, to see space travel as something within their reach—as routine as boarding a commercial airliner. To make that a reality, we have to stay laser-focused on safety, avoiding the kinds of outcomes that you described. 

You have two sons. What do they think of all this? 

I hope they don’t flex too much on the playground, but they do think it’s pretty cool. They were out in New Mexico with my wife when I flew earlier this month. They’re still young, so their responses are short and sweet: “That’s awesome.” What’s really exciting, though, is that they’re growing up in a time when space travel is not only cool but also normalized.

You mentioned that you didn’t make it into the Canadian Space Agency’s program, which must have been such a huge disappointment at the time, but now that you’ve landed on this other path, does it feel like fate?

I could not be more excited about the work I’m doing and the contribution I’m making today. My joke is: what’s better than one Chris Hadfield? Five Chris Hadfields! Not that I’m comparing myself to Chris Hadfield. 

How’s your mustache?

Ha. I’ve tried in the past, but no. Chris is a hero of mine and has been very supportive. After our mission, when I landed, my phone was blowing up with messages. Among them was a text from Chris that just said, “Congratulations, astronaut. How was it?”