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Alumni Gazette

Scheduled for LiftoffJosh Cassada ’00 (PhD) prepares for space flight later this year.Photograph by J. Adam Fenster
University of Rochester astronaut Josh CassadaSTATION TO STATION: US Navy test pilot Josh Cassada ’00 (PhD) is scheduled to join a mission to the International Space Station later this year. (Photo: J. Adam Fenster)

Cassada, who earned his doctorate in physics from Rochester, has been assigned to NASA’s SpaceX Crew-5 mission, expected to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida no later than fall 2022.

Cassada—shown here with a retired Saturn V rocket at the Johnson Space Center in Houston—will serve as pilot for the mission, which represents his first space flight.

Selected as an astronaut in 2013, he previously was set to take part in a mission aboard NASA’s Boeing Starliner program.

Once at the space station, Cassada will join other crew members “for a long duration stay to conduct science activities for the benefit of humanity and exploration,” according to NASA.