This is a big week for fans of space travel.

Malachi Goertzen is a Grade 9 student here in Steinbach. He says he got up in the wee hours of Monday morning to witness a big moment for Nasa.

A photo of Ingenuity on Mars. Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech."In February NASA's Perseverance mars rover for Mars 2020 landed on Mars and along with it was ingenuity, a helicopter. This was going to be the first powered flight on another planet so I got up at about 5 AM to watch."

Being a super fan of all things space, Goertzen says it was pretty exciting to see this monumental moment unfold.

"That is really incredible for me, I have obviously never seen anything like it. I was cheering silently. I have to be pretty quiet at 5 in the morning but I did all I could to cheer them on."

And that’s not all. Goertzen says along with other space fans from around the world, he's planning another middle-of-the-night viewing this Thursday.

"There is a SpaceX Crew 2 mission later this week, I am going to get up at 1 in the morning for that one."

Goertzen says his parents are ok with him getting up for these types of broadcasts but they do have one rule; don't wake them up. It may seem like a big aspiration, but Goertzen hopes to one day have a career in the space sector as a rocket engineer or even astronaut.