David Saint-Jacques

David Saint-Jacques has always been keen on exploring the world around him. Prior to joining the Canadian space program in May 2009, he practised family medicine in a northern Canadian village overlooking Hudson Bay. Before that, he worked as an astrophysicist in Cambridge, United Kingdom; Tokyo, Japan; Hawaii, USA; and Montreal, Canada. He was also a clinical faculty lecturer for McGill University’s Faculty of Medicine and an engineer for a Quebec-based small business.

As a member of the international astronaut team, David Saint-Jacques has acted as capcom (the liaison between the team on the ground and the crew in space) and carried out various operations planning and support functions at NASA’s Mission Control Center and Astronaut Office. On December 3, 2018, he flew to the International Space Station as an Expedition 58/59 flight engineer and co-pilot of the Soyuz spacecraft. During his 204-day mission, he conducted a series of scientific experiments, robotics tasks and technology demonstrations. David Saint-Jacques became the fourth Canadian Space Agency astronaut to perform a spacewalk and the first to use Canadarm2 to catch a visiting spacecraft.