Retired NASA Astronaut on His ISS Experience

CHRIS CASSIDY, FEATURED IN “AMONG THE STARS”: And excited for our viewers to see behind the scenes of what it takes as a team effort to get crews to space. And it’s an international effort with folks all around the globe. And that’s the highlight, really, of my 18 years as an astronaut. I have individual personal experiences, but I feel like those are shared with the whole NASA workforce and international partners. In those 18 years, three trips to space. Once in a shuttle, two times launching on a Russian Soyuz. And the most recent one, you said at the beginning during COVID, which was a great place to be off the planet during the pandemic.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: So, how did this series come about? I mean, you — we should note, you were the fifth hundred person in space. I really like that, that round number there. But this was your final mission. How did you come about having it documented?

CASSIDY: Well, it wasn’t about me. There’s an experiment that was on the International Space Station, in on the International Space Station, which is featured in the program called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Very expensive, very high-end science, cutting-edge science, really, that’s looking deep into the universe for its origins. And that machine was failing. It needed repair. A serious complex repair. And so, the initial idea was to capture this effort. How do we do this repair? How do we conduct th space watch? When will it be done? And that was the onset of the program. But with anything, it’s about the people, right? And once you — the documentary crew got involved and realized the amazing stories that weave together, it sort of evolved into what it is now, a six-part series.

GOLODRYGA: What’s so important about this is that it really highlights what takes place in the International Space Station and all of the scientific work and research that not only you, but as you say, so many others collaborate on and in this time, where there’s so much tension in the world. One could always look to NASA and the astronauts and the International Space Station as a place where you have people come together from around the world. Let’s just show a brief clip of what you describe you were working on.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The International Space Station is an orbital laboratory. It really is about two things, making life on earth better and enabling us to go beyond lower earth (ph) orbit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. This is the veggie experiment, growing plants in space. The great thing about this payload, this experiment is that when we’re all done, we get to eat this.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we were there six years ago, we were not running nearly the number of experiments that are happening now. Now, it’s like nonstop. So, that’s exciting.

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