This week we are recognizing one of the eight 2026 Elsie award winners. Named after Elsie MacGill, the chief aeronautical engineer at Canadian Car and Foundry who oversaw the production of 1,451 Hawker Hurricanes during the Second World War, these are annual awards given by the Northern Lights Aero Foundation, an organization whose vision is “To be the Premier organization in Canada that inspires, supports, and promotes women in the field of aviation and aerospace.” You can learn more about the organization by clicking here.
The sixth of eight award recipients is featured this week.
Dr. Jenni Gibbons, recognized with the Trailblazer Award
Dr. Jenni Gibbons is a Canadian Space Agency astronaut who served as backup crew member to Col. Jeremy Hansen for the Artemis II mission. She played an important role in the mission, developing crew procedures and training with the flight control team, configured the Integrity capsule systems prior to crew ingress for launch, and worked in mission control communicating directly with the crew, including the lunar flyby phase. Her commitment to operational excellence led to her assignment as lead mission control communicator for the Artemis III mission. Earlier in her training at NASA, Jenni mentored a class of astronaut candidates through spacewalk training and supported five spacewalks from the ground. She also served as lead crew representative and mission control communicator (CAPCOM) for International Space Station Increment 63. She holds a Bachelor of Engineering with honours from McGill University and a PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, where she was previously an Assistant Professor specializing in internal combustion engines. She joined the Canadian Space Agency in 2017. Jenni is also an instrument-rated private pilot and flies as aircrew on the T-38 Talon at NASA.
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