Canadian astronaut Kutryk preps for September Crew-13 mission to space station

Joshua Kutryk stood in Calgary on a Sunday in May, three months away from strapping into a Crew Dragon capsule and launching toward the International Space Station. The Canadian astronaut had come to the TELUS Spark Science Centre to answer questions from young people about what awaited him in September—a six-month mission aboard humanity's orbiting laboratory, where he would be one of four crew members, alongside two Americans and a Russian cosmonaut.

Kutryk grew up on a cattle farm near Vegreville, Alberta, born in Fort Saskatchewan. He spent nights alone looking up at the sky, and somewhere in those hours under the stars, space became not a distant abstraction but a destination. Now, after years of training, he was weeks away from seeing Earth the way few humans ever do—not as the world beneath their feet, but as a single blue sphere suspended in darkness.

The Crew-13 mission, launching from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, represents the third crewed commercial flight to the station. Once in orbit, Kutryk's work would split into two demanding halves. The first was operational: maintaining and repairing the station itself, a task that had consumed years of his preparation. The second was scientific—conducting experiments on behalf of researchers across Canada and around the world. These investigations could only happen in microgravity. They touched on medical care, aging, cancer treatment, and other challenges that Earth-bound laboratories could not adequately address.

When asked what he most anticipated, Kutryk did not speak of the experiments or the training or the historic weight of the moment. He spoke of the window. That first look out, seeing Earth not as a map or a concept but as its own small thing—a blue ball hanging in space. For downtime during those six months, he planned to bring a single item from home: a Kindle, because he loved to read.

Before launch, Kutryk would return to NASA Mission Control in Houston for final training phases, then enter quarantine in August. His visit to Calgary was part of a larger effort to inspire younger Canadians, to show them that space exploration was not something that happened elsewhere but something Canadians built, invented, and participated in. He noted that fellow Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen had recently flown on the Artemis II mission, making Canada only the second nation to send humans farther and faster than anyone had gone before. That achievement, Kutryk emphasized, was not accidental. It reflected Canadian policy, sustained investment, and the work of Canadian innovators whose tools and discoveries NASA and the world relied upon.

As the International Space Station program approaches its sunset, the next frontier is the moon. Technology is advancing to allow humans to survive in space for longer periods, to establish sustained presence, to conduct science on another world. Kutryk was uncertain what Canada's exact role would be, but he was certain it would be significant. The journey ahead, he said, would involve untold scientific discovery and invention. For him and his colleagues at the Canadian Space Agency, the mission extended beyond the technical and the scientific. It was about showing younger Canadians what was possible, about inspiring them to do great things. That, he said, was what it was all about.