Ex-space station commander is a star in Disney+ documentary
Chris Cassidy was 50 years old when he strapped into a Russian Soyuz capsule. He knew it would be his third and final mission into space.
Astronauts understand the risks. They know each mission might be their last. But this feeling was different.
“What do I want to do outside of life as an astronaut?” Cassidy said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “And there’s more runway available to me if I left the government now.”
Cassidy’s final mission launched April 9, 2020. He served as commander of the International Space Station, participated in four spacewalks and contributed to hundreds of experiments.
He also operated as a one-man camera crew capturing his daily routine with different angles and lighting.
His final mission — two years of preparation and 196 days in space — was captured in a six-part documentary series called “Among the Stars.” It became available last week on the Disney+ streaming service.
“Each week I would try to grab some little random things, like pushing a light switch or filling a drink bag,” Cassidy said. “All of that footage that you see in the documentary is me putting a camera, hitting record, doing my thing. I enjoyed it because it’s not for the documentary only. I have that footage myself now, so later in life I’ll be able to pull it up and see the raw footage.”
Cassidy, now 51, was born in Salem, Mass., but grew up in York, Maine. He was the quarterback on his high school football team, completed the Naval Academy Prep School and then attended the U.S. Naval Academy.
A retired Navy SEAL, Cassidy served two tours in Afghanistan.
He received the Bronze Star Medal with Combat “V” and a second Bronze Star for combat leadership service in Afghanistan. In 2004, his platoon was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for an operation at the Zhawar Kili cave complex on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Cassidy was selected as a NASA astronaut candidate in 2004. His first mission was on the space shuttle in 2009, and then he flew on a Soyuz capsule in 2013.
The documentary began filming Cassidy two years before he strapped in for his final spaceflight. Cassidy was training for high-stakes spacewalks that would repair the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a device attached to the space station that looks for dark matter, antimatter and missing matter.
Cassidy was training with the expectation that he’d be assigned a ride into space. But that changed when the rocket launching NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin malfunctioned after liftoff. Sirens began going off inside the capsule as an escape system pulled Hague and Ovchinin away from the dangerous rocket booster.
The crew members landed beneath parachutes and were OK, but this incident changed the launch schedule and Cassidy was no longer slated to work on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. He’d be assisting from the ground rather than from space.
This was a letdown for Cassidy because spacewalks were one of his favorite things about being in space.
“They’re challenging,” he said. “They’re hard, but it’s a very concrete deliverable. At the end of the day, you’ve done a thing. You’ve fixed something, installed something, made the space station better and you worked hard to do it with a team. And it’s an amazing environment.”
But it can be dangerous, too. On his second trip into space, in 2013, Cassidy was outside of the station with European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano when Parmitano’s helmet started to fill with water.
“I feel a lot of water on the back of my head,” Parmitano said in footage of the spacewalk shared in the documentary. “I see beads of sweat.”
“No, it’s not sweat,” Cassidy said.
“Now it’s in my eyes,” Parmitano said.
Mission control instructed Parmitano to return to the airlock. But his motions returning to the airlock caused the water to move around inside his helmet. It sloshed over his eyes and covered his nose. His sound was intermittent, and he could barely speak.
“By the time we were at the airlock closing the hatch, I realized that this is something very, very serious,” Cassidy told the Chronicle. “And we must get this hatch closed on the first try because we have no time margin to mess around with a leaky hatch. And that’s all I remember thinking about is get the hatch closed.”
The crew got Parmitano out of his water-logged helmet. NASA later determined that cooling water used in the suit to help astronauts regulate their body temperature had leaked into his helmet.
Despite this incident, Cassidy still enjoyed spacewalks and was hoping to do one on his last mission. That opportunity presented itself when SpaceX carried NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the space station on the company’s first crewed mission.
Cassidy and Behnken completed four spacewalks to upgrade space station batteries. This brought Cassidy to 10 spacewalks where he accumulated 54 hours and 51 minutes of spacewalk time. He’s tied for the most spacewalks by an American astronaut.
Cassidy returned from his last mission on Oct. 21, 2020. His last day with NASA was May 28.
“I love being an astronaut,” he said. “I love flying in space, but I also know that there’s a time and place that’s best to leave. Let the next generation of astronauts have their opportunities.”
He didn’t really need a fourth flight to the space station. And based on his age and the timing of NASA’s return to the moon, Cassidy didn’t expect to walk on the lunar surface.
“There are some cases where astronauts are still in a flying status, but they, in some people’s opinions, have flown their fair share of missions,” he said. “And it would be a little bit unnecessary for them to fly another mission.”
NASA astronauts average 2.3 spaceflights before retiring, though 19 astronauts never made it into space. This includes people who left the agency prior to flying as well as those who died on the Challenger shuttle disaster or from other causes prior to reaching microgravity.
Cassidy emphasized that there’s nothing wrong with astronauts who decide to stay and keep flying. But he wanted to see what else he could accomplish. And leaving the agency at 51, rather than 57 or 58, gave Cassidy more years in the workforce.
In August, he was announced as the president and CEO of the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation. Cassidy is leading a project to build the National Medal of Honor Museum and Medal of Honor Leadership Institute in Arlington and the National Medal of Honor Monument in Washington, D.C. These will preserve and commemorate stories of the fewer than 4,000 individuals who have earned the Medal of Honor — America’s highest award for valor in combat.
“It’s serving the nation in a different way,” Cassidy said. “Something totally different than aerospace, but that’s what’s exciting. I’m happy to use my brain in a different way and be stimulated in a different way.”