Canadian wanderer David Saint-Jacques starts final training for ISS mission

For Canadian wanderer David Saint-Jacques, it’s all about credentials as he continues his training 4 months before he blasts off into space.

Saint-Jacques, 48, is now in Moscow along with U.S. wanderer Anne McClain and Russian Oleg Kononenko, who will join him on house a Soyuz aircraft when it launches for a International Space Station from Kazakhstan on Dec. 20.

“The idea is to get to a day of a launch with a transparent mind and a certainty we have full possession of your faculties,” he pronounced in an in-person talk with The Canadian Press on Thursday.

“I like a towering analogy. Right now, I’m climbing Everest. If we ask a traveller who is two-thirds adult Everest if he is vehement about shortly removing to a top… no. He is concentrated. He doesn’t wish to outing up, doesn’t wish to get held in his rope.”

The Quebec native, who will turn a ninth Canadian to transport to space, will offer as a co-pilot for a Soyuz plug and, given of his medical training, will be a crew’s alloy on house a hire during a six-month stay.

Saint-Jacques is awaiting unbending hurdles during tiresome training tests Friday.

“At a beginning, we don’t know what to do…but finally we get improved and during a finish we tarry roughly all they chuck during you, and you’re ready,” he said.

An wanderer given 2009, Saint-Jacques was named to a goal in 2016.

Trained as both an operative and a doctor, Saint-Jacques will be a initial Canadian aboard a space hire given Chris Hadfield spent 5 months on it in 2012 and 2013.

McClain, who also will be drifting into space for a initial time, pronounced she is happy to be doing so with her Canadian teammate.

“I knew David before we was reserved to this moody and we was really happy when we got a assignment with him,” she told The Canadian Press in a apart interview. “And I’ve gotten to know him even improved over a past few years. And we consider a many critical aspect of a organisation is trust — and we have come to trust David both professionally and personally.

He’s got an gaseous celebrity that tends to pull everybody in.– NASA’s Doug Wheelock

“All of a lives are in any other’s hands in a Soyuz and we trust him to do a right thing. And personally, we can rest on him for anything that comes adult in my possess life.”

Doug Wheelock, a NASA executive of operations during a Moscow space facility, also had kind difference for Saint-Jacques.

“He’s a grin with legs, so David is only a fun to have on a group here,” he said.

“He’s got an gaseous celebrity that tends to pull everybody in…David has been only a genuine valuables for us.”

Wheelock pronounced being in space is “like a ballet on fingertips.”

“David is really well-tuned, he’s got a hands of a surgeon, so he’s got a really light, really autocratic hold on a control systems and he’ll be a good space flyer,” he added.

Saint-Jacques will applaud his 49th birthday on a space hire Jan. 6.

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/david-saint-jacques-astronaut-iss-russia-training-1.4788802?cmp=rss