Mainer & NASA Astronaut Chris Cassidy Retiring

After 17 years as an NASA astronaut, Mainer Chris Cassidy is retiring. He plans to make it official on Friday.

Cassidy is from southern Maine in York - that’s where he went to high school. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts on January 4, 1970. He is 51 years old.

Cassidy has a long history with the National Aeronautics and Space Agency - NASA. He worked with the agency for 17 years, starting in 2004. A nice piece of trivia is Cassidy was the 500th person to fly into space.

Chris Cassidy has been on three space flights - recently with Jessica Meir from Caribou who was already on the International Space Station when he arrived. Cassidy was the commander of his flight, Expedition 63. On that mission, he completed four spacewalks - he’s done a total of 10 spacewalks in his flight career. With all the hours added up and time in space, Cassidy has completed over a year in orbit - 378 days to be exact.

He was also a Navy SEAL for 11 years and served in the military for 28 years total. Cassidy went to Afghanistan two different times and also was deployed to the Mediterranean twice.

Cassidy has a long and impressive record with the military. One big achievement among many was being awarded the Bronze Star with a ‘V’ for combat and a Presidential Unit Citation. He led an operation on the Afghanistan and Pakistan border for nine days at a location called the Zharwar Kili Cave.