One step closer to a dream job in space
Kitchener-raised engineer on shortlist to become an astronaut
KITCHENER — After spending most of her life gazing up at the stars, Martha Lenio was suddenly worried an old soccer injury might keep her stuck on earth.
Almost a decade ago, while getting her PhD from the University of New South Wales in Australia, the Kitchener-raised engineer tore a ligament in her knee during a varsity soccer game.
Fast forward to just a few months back, when she was getting a medical exam for one of the toughest job competitions in Canada — to be one of the country’s next astronauts.
“They wanted to know about my injury history,” Lenio said. “And I was worried. If an ACL tear is something that can knock you out of the program, that’s not something I can do anything about.”
But when she was examined by a flight surgeon from the Canadian Space Agency, the knee held up. She was flexible enough to handle the demands of space travel. She exhaled. Lenio is now one of just 72 Canadians remaining out of 3,772 applicants vying to be one of the country’s next two astronauts. She’s up against pilots, surgeons and scientists scattered across the globe, including a handful of others with local connections.
Becoming an astronaut is something she’s dreamt about since she was a girl stargazing from her family’s cottage. She knows it’s an
extremely rare line of work, so she’s tried to build a career that’s still rewarding if she remains earthbound.
“I’m very honoured just to be on the list,” she said. “I’ve had this goal in the back of my mind for quite some time. But the chances are so slim, so I wanted to make sure I was working on something that was also valuable to life here on Earth.”
On paper, Lenio looks like she has as good a shot as anyone.
She’s a former track and field athlete who bikes, skydives, plays soccer, jogs, scuba dives and hikes at high altitude. The University of Waterloo mechanical engineering grad taught in Ghana, helped launch the Waterloo Space Society in 2001 and now owns a consulting company focused on renewable energy.
In 2014, she spent eight months living inside a cramped dome on a volcano in Hawaii, part of a NASA simulation to test psychological pressures on astronauts on a long voyage to Mars.
Lenio was the mission’s commander, and came away convinced she’s ready for the challenges of severe isolation with a small number of people in a cramped space. That experience taught her a lot about how wellrounded astronauts need to be, both physically and mentally.
“That’s part of the thing that appeals to me about being an astronaut. You have to wear so many hats and be able to do so many things,” she said.
The final astronaut selection will be announced in August, and all candidates will spend the next few months being further analyzed, tested and interviewed by the space agency. Lenio knows those tests can come on short notice, so she’s trying to be ready whenever the call comes.
“Patience has been a big part of the process,” she said. “And a lot of this you can’t train for. At the end of the day, you have to just be yourself.”
Also on the list of would-be astronauts is Kitchener-born Scott VanBommel, a former Gryphons hockey goalie and doctorate student in physics at the University of Guelph. He was a member of the crew at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, and worked with a Guelph research team that designed an instrument that tested rock samples on Mars.
VanBommel says he’s long been fascinated by the possibility of a potential mission to Mars in the mid-2030s.
“You could argue that the search for life outside Earth is one of mankind’s biggest questions,” he said.
Another astronaut candidate is Jesse Zroback, a family physician in Marathon, Ont., who studied chemical engineering at the University of Waterloo.
Petersburg’s Francis Frenzel is a pilot in training with the Royal Canadian Air Force, based out of Canadian Forces Base Trenton.
There’s Thomas Karakolis, a scientist at Defence Research and Development Canada, who earned his PhD in kinesiology at Waterloo.
“I’ve always been a curious person, and have always wanted to push the boundaries of what I believe is possible,” he said.
Francis Hane, another University of Waterloo PhD, is a commercial pilot who flies Boeing 737s and studies how magnetic resonance imaging can be used to detect Alzheimer’s disease.
There’s also Lesha Kolubinski, a Guelph native who’s a flight test engineer in Seattle, and Matthew Bamsey, an engineer at an aerospace centre in Germany who studied environmental biology at the University of Guelph.
Two other Guelph graduates — physician Kris Lehnhardt and Olathe MacIntyre, a staff scientist at the Space Place and Planetarium at Science North in Sudbury — are also on the list.