Wanna be an astronaut? CSA recruiting
By Design Engineering staff
General Aerospace Astronaut Canadian Space AgencyCSA encouraging engineers, doctors and science professionals to apply as potential Canadian space explorers.
CSA Astronaut Dave Williams performs a spacewalk during Shuttle Mission STS-118. (Credit: NASA)
To qualify for consideration, Canadian applicants are required to have a Bachelor’s degree engineering or science (physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) and/or a medical degree with at least three years of professional experience. In addition, they have to be between approximately 5 and 6.2 feet tall and 110 to 210 pounds. You also need 20/20 vision corrected, normal hearing and not suffer from high blood pressure (less than 140/90).
That’s not to say those who fit the CSA’s specs are a shoe-in. Since the latest recruitment campaign began in June, the CSA says it has received 3,372 applications from hopefuls residing in every province and territory. Ontario leads with the most applications, followed by Quebec and Alberta. By city, Toronto tops the list with 417 applications. Additionally, 68.5% of applicants in this round so far are men and only 22.5% are women (9% didn’t specify sex), although the CSA says it would like to see those numbers level out since women make up a little more than half of Canada’s population.
According to the CSA, half of the 12 Canadian astronauts recruited in the agency’s three previous recruitment campaigns, were from Ontario. The others are from Quebec, B.C and Saskatchewan, plus one Icelander who grew up in Nova Scotia and British Columbia.
