Winning a seat in Parliament might seem like a cakewalk after travelling into space, but the question for former astronaut Marc Garneau is, does he have the right stuff? Or more precisely, does his party?
Popularity for his Liberal Party is waning in Quebec, where Garneau is running again after failing to win a seat in the last federal election. Liberal support in la belle province is hovering around 20 per cent according to recent polls.
And rival parties are moving ahead of the Grits. Recent polls show support for the Conservatives and the NDP at around 30 per cent each.
This situation doesn't bode well for Garneau, who is running in the Montreal riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie.
The riding has been a Liberal stronghold for five decades, but its parliamentary seat has been vacant since Liberal MP Lucienne Robillard resigned in January. Six people are now vying for the seat, including a strong NDP candidate.
Still, Garneau has one thing his opponents don't – a storied past.
A former Canadian naval officer, Garneau was named as one of Canada's first six astronauts in 1983. He became the first Canadian in space a year later, when he flew aboard a U.S. space shuttle as a payload specialist.
In 1989, Garneau was named deputy director of the Canadian astronaut program.
Three years later, he started training with NASA, and travelled to space twice more, in 1996 and 2000. The second of those missions docked at the International Space Station.
Garneau was named president of the Canadian Space Agency in November 2001, a position he held for four years until he stepped down to run for a seat in the House of Commons.
He was defeated in the 2006 federal election, in the Vaudreuil-Soulanges riding. He remained active in the Liberal Party, however, and supported Michael Ignatieff's failed bid to become leader.
Although he left politics a year ago, when Liberal leader Stephane Dion refused to endorse him as the Liberal candidate in a by-election in Outremont, he came back for another attempt to get his political career off the launch pad.