Ann Arbor — Since he was 5 years old, U.S. Navy Capt. Josh Cassada knew where he wanted to be when he grew up: out of this world.
Although initially having an affinity with baseball, gravity would throw a curveball at his future.
“I also just loved math and science,” Cassada told The Detroit News. “That kind of was my upbringing, those three things: math, science, and baseball. … But it became very clear to me that this guy wasn’t going to play beyond college, really.”
Instead, he would go on to become a physicist and test pilot with the U.S. Navy and, ultimately, an astronaut.
Born in San Diego, Calif., Cassada considers White Bear Lake, Minn., to be his hometown, according to a biography on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s website. He earned a degree in physics from Albion College in 1995 and earned a master’s and doctorate from the University of Rochester in 1997 and 2000, respectively. He and his wife, Megan of Charlevoix, Mich., have two children.
In 2013, he was selected to join NASA as an astronaut.
Nine years later on Oct. 5, he piloted a crew of three others, launching to the International Space Station on NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission. The crew lived and worked aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, which spanned the universe in orbit for 157 days, until returning March 11.
It was the agency’s fifth commercial crew rotation mission to the ISS, according to NASA’s website.
Adorned in a blue NASA flight suit, decorated with several mission patches and the American flag on his left shoulder, Cassada stood Saturday morning before nearly 600 listeners in the University of Michigan’s Central Campus Classroom Building and recalled his experience of conducting three spacewalks, totaling 21 hours and 24 minutes.
The session, hosted by the school’s Saturday Morning Physics class, featured footage from Crew-5’s expedition, live technology demonstrations, and a question-and-answer segment.
Cassada recalled a moment when he and the crew members had to “shelter in place” as there was an object in space coming toward the ISS, prompting them to take action.
“We found it late. … It was going to get close — not necessarily impact, but close enough that we needed to take action,” Cassada said. “We can’t move the space station out of the way, so our best option (was) to fire up our spacecraft, strap in and kind of use hope as a strategy that if it’s going to hit, it would hit the space station, which is much bigger than our spacecraft.”
Crew members were able to avoid the object without incident, Cassada said.
The five-month expedition included several sustainability experiments, including fluid behavior in microgravity, cardiovascular health, and bioprinting. One test involved dwarf tomatoes. Researchers observed the types of soil, water intake, and the frequency of the tomatoes’ lighting so they could devise “the right plan for deep-space exploration” and space explorers could grow their own food while away from Earth, Cassada said.
“We can’t send supply missions to Mars, for example,” Cassada said, adding that it takes time to apply their results to the next technical developments.
“For the stuff that happened while we were onboard, that information is still being processed,” Cassada noted. “The stuff that we were doing was based upon learning experiments that happened previously.”
The ISS, according to NASA, orbits Earth at an average 248 miles above the surface, traveling about 17,900 mph. Cassada said those speeds allowed his crew to circle Earth every 90 minutes, allowing them to observe “16 sunrises and sunsets every single day,” Cassada added.
He highlighted the importance of exercising at least two hours daily while in space, as traveling crews lose up to 2% of bone mass every month if they go without cardiovascular activity, adding that a medical professional advised him to eat 3,000 calories daily.
After splashing down back to earth, making the adjustment to stand and walk again took some time.
“It was probably two weeks or so until I felt 100 percent,” he said. “It’s different for every person; some people are super excited to get right back to space, they’re like, ‘Yeah, gravity, I don’t like,’ but for me, I really enjoy being in space — its incredible, but I also like 1G (normal gravity); our bodies are made for it.”
Saturday Morning Physics classes are hosted by the Ann Arbor school’s department of physics. For roughly 25 years, they’ve ushered in voices that tap science in accessible and engaging formats of discussion, according to David Gerdes, the school’s physics department chair.
“I really hope that people will leave these kinds of talks with a sense of inspiration, wonder and possibility, and that great things are worth trying to do.”
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