MONTREAL — Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space, believes the country should plan an all-Canadian robotic mission to Mars — a move that would stimulate the country's space industry during uncertain times for North American space programs.

Garneau, a veteran of three space shuttle missions, also favours doubling the Canadian Space Agency's $425-million annual budget over the next decade.

The 62-year-old Liberal MP from Montreal recently looked back on the shuttle program with Postmedia News as NASA prepares for the final launch — Atlantis on July 8

And as one of the first crop of six Canadians picked as astronauts in 1983, Garneau still doesn't know why he was chosen to go to space ahead of the others.

- What will you miss the most about the space shuttle?

The excitement of every mission. I've followed them all very, very closely. I've gotten to know a lot of the crews. Every mission does something different. The last three or four dozen missions have been focused on building the International Space Station. I was in one of those missions, STS-97. We added the first solar panels to the station. I was also there before the station was there and every one of the shuttle missions that went up was interesting in and of itself because it did something different every time.

- What are some of your most intense shuttle memories?

Obviously, launch is a very interesting experience. You have to be very focused because in 8 1/2 minutes you're going to go from a standstill to 28,000-kilometres an hour. That's the equivalent of eight kilometres per second. You have to release a lot of energy to get going that quickly and it all has to be released in the right way and everything has to go very well. And if something goes wrong you have to react extremely quickly. Then, of course, the part that you enjoy the most is when you're up there you get to look out the window and see our beautiful planet.

And coming back is a very interesting phase. The reality is that you're now having to get rid of all that energy that you've built up in getting up into space so that you can slow down enough to land on a runway. And this to me, in many ways, is the miracle of the space shuttle program. Instead of coming down in a parachute in a capsule and landing in the water or on the earth, you're a glider and you're actually coming in and landing on a runway and you're going to land within a few seconds of what was predicted months before when they planned the mission. That is the brilliance of the technology.

- What does it look like through the shuttle windows as you re-enter Earth's atmosphere?

It's quite spectacular. As you begin to enter the thicker part of the atmosphere you are actually going so quickly that there's a plasma, a gas, which is the molecules up there that get compressed because you're plowing into the atmosphere. A pink-and-orange glow surrounds the windows. As you get lower down you begin to lose some of that darkness and you enter into an area that's a little like what an airplane goes through at 35,000 feet. What's different is that because you're a glider and because of the design of the shuttle you're very steeply pitched. You're pitched at about 19 degrees, whilst an ordinary airliner is nearly horizontal. In the shuttle if you look out the window it looks almost like you're heading down vertically. You're not, but it looks quite strange if you're not used to it. (But) you are dropping like a brick. And you somehow have to be able to land on the threshold of that runway going at about 200 knots, which is much faster than an ordinary commercial airliner. And, of course, NASA astronauts are very good at this.