Virgin Galactic recently announced crew assignments for “Galactic 07”, which is the next planned spaceflight of their flagship VSS Unity. Jameel Janjua, a former RCAF fighter pilot and RMC graduate was selected to pilot the spacecraft. This is significant as the only other Canadian to fly a spacecraft, in the truest sense of the word, was Chris Hadfield.
Major Janjua reached out to the RMC Alumni Association to seek a piece of RMC to take with him on his upcoming flight on 8 June. He noted that “RMC played a huge and irreplaceable part in my own journey, which is still ongoing, of course, so it was natural to offer after taking some time to reflect on how I got here. I hope that I can do that patch justice and look forward to returning it to the College at some point after it’s accompanied me to space.”
Major Jameel Janjua was born in Calgary, Alberta, and graduated from the RMC Canada CMR with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical and Materials Engineering, Class of 2000. He was awarded the Governor General’s medal as the top graduate. Upon graduation from RMC, Jameel was awarded a post-graduate scholarship from the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) to complete a Master of Science (SM) degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Safe travels Major Janjua from all of us at the Colleges.
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