6.06.2024

Jameel Janjua (centre, left, and right) looked to the skies as a young boy (Picture: Zaytoon Janjua/Virgin Galactic)

As a schoolboy with dreams of making it to space, Jameel Janjua’s possessions included a poster of a pioneering astronaut and an immaculate air cadet uniform.

The path to the skies was far from guaranteed for a child growing up in a family who had emigrated across three countries before his enterprising parents settled in Canada. 

In around a week’s time the pilot — who took his first step towards the world of flight at the age of 11 — is due to jump behind the controls on a Virgin Galactic spaceship for the first time.  

A career spanning almost four decades, which has included being part of an RAF fighter squadron in wartime Afghanistan, has taken none of the thrill away from his ambition.  

Jameel, 45, is due to be in the right-hand pilot’s seat on Galactic 07 with his parents, wife, and sons aged eight and 10, watching from Spaceport America in New Mexico. 

He has previously flown on heavy payload mothership VMS Eve, which carries the spacecraft on a ‘mated climb’ before the vehicle separates and makes an almost vertical, rocket-boosted ascent to an apogee of around 295,000ft. The former test pilot is planning to remind himself to look out the window on a mission that entails strict protocols and begins with the eight-second, supersonic boost. 

‘Even for someone who’s done more than 5,000 flying hours in 60 different aircraft types, I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say this one was special,’ Jameel says from his home in California.

‘It’s special in the lead-up and in the mission of opening up access to space.  

‘I wouldn’t say I don’t get excited for flights — I absolutely love it, it’s my passion — but this one certainly has a special place on that spectrum.  

‘I’ve been flying since I was 16 years old, and I was never even close to 295,000ft.’ 

Once the mothership signals ‘release, release, release’, Jameel, commander Nicola Pecile and four private astronauts will make the burn towards space.  

‘We’ll share flying tasks so at Nicola’s discretion we will share being at the controls of a rocket-powered space plane,’ he says.  

‘Just saying that gives me chills, it’s one of those pinch myself moments.  

‘There are not very many humans who can say they’ve been at the controls of a winged space plane, and I’m looking forward to that.’  

Jameel’s grandparents emigrated from British India before it was split into two countries, initially settling in Tanzania. His mother then studied at Aberystwyth University in Wales before his parents moved to Canada, where Jameel and his older brother Arif were born.  

The family’s trajectory included his dad serving as an officer with the Tanzania military, which included training with the British Army’s Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. 

With the blessing of his mum, who he describes as an ‘amazing woman’, he lied about his age to get into the Royal Canadian Air Cadets at the age of 11. It proved a fortuitous move.

He had learnt to fly by 16 and as an adult moved on to airframes including the Typhoon and F-16. 

Jameel’s own UK connections included spending time with the RAF’s 14th Squadron as a Canadian Exchange Officer when he flew Tornado GR4 jets from the Lossiemouth air base over what the pilots called ‘moon country’ in remote northern Scotland — the closest he ever thought he would get to space flight.  

The dual American-Canadian citizen also deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, between 2010 and 2011, in support of Operation Herrick, the RAF’s contribution to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.

He met his wife, also Canadian, through a mutual friend while she worked as a teacher at Arnold Lodge private school in Leamington Spa.

After arriving in Canada, Jameel’s dad worked as a mechanical engineer, setting up his own business, while his mum worked in science information resources in the years when the universal internet, let alone a commercial spaceline, was the stuff of sci-fi.  

‘My parents arrived in Canada with very little, they had family in Calgary but they didn’t have much,’ Jameel says. ‘They had to work very, very hard to provide opportunities for my brother and I, and even school pick-up [around their long work hours] was tough.  

‘I’m delighted to represent so many people in Canada, the US and the UK whose parents moved to those countries. I hope that I can help broaden out the arcs of what it looks, sounds and feels like to be a professional astronaut, even if it is just one kid who sees my story and it opens their imagination to do something they would never otherwise have done. 

‘There are no boundaries as to what those countries can offer in terms of opportunity.’ 

Jameel, who has continued his family’s emigration story by moving to the US, learnt to fly in a field in Southern Alberta before earning his air force wings.

With his mum’s blessing, they told the air cadets that he was 12 — when in fact he was a month shy of the then required minimum age to join.  

‘I can admit now and the air cadets and other organisations dear to me will probably give me a pass,’ Jameel confides, referring to his role in opening up the accessibility of space travel.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield, also a former air cadet, was one of Canada’s space pioneers as Jameel grew up. 

‘I read about Chris Hadfield in an air force magazine and had a poster of him on my wall,’ Jameel says.

‘Sometimes I text him and tell him how these small aspects of my life had been nudged, more than nudged, by him and others like him.  

‘It’s such a fantastic example of a starting gameplan that was mine to morph and change as I see fit, or as the universe and forces of nature saw fit. That was my path.’  

Galactic 07 will involve the carrier aircraft taking off from the futuristic spaceport before the pilots and private astronauts in the rocket ship experience weightlessness and take in the wonderous views of their home planet. Nicola and Jameel will then form the VSS Unity into a folded shape to spread the friction heat as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere.  

The 12th Virgin Galactic spaceflight to date will host a sub-orbital science lab where autonomous and human-tended experiments will be conducted, with the latter being conducted by a researcher who will take one of the private astronaut berths.

Pre-flight bonding with the astronauts, with the citizen passengers hailing from New York, California and Italy, is a priority. But Jameel will have a smaller consideration while pushing the bounds of technology.

‘Nicola is fantastic, he has flown many times to space and in our rehearsal simulators he always tells me part-way through, “don’t forget to look out the window”,’ he says,  

‘He’ll tell me two or three times in a boost run, “don’t forget to look out the window”, and it’s a great reminder of the lesson I’ve learnt over the last months of training and over the years in fighter jets to force myself to take some time for myself.’ 

Jameel hopes Galactic 07— due to launch after the flight window opens on Saturday, June 8 —  is only the beginning of a bigger journey.  

‘Although I am so proud and excited to be part of this, one of the opening acts of commercial access to space, I also know and sincerely hope deep inside that the changes that these enable will be beyond my imagination,’ he says.

Virgin Galactic CEO Michael Colglazier described the company’s seventh commercial spaceflight as a turning point for the spaceline.  

Quelle: METRO