WHITE BEAR LAKE, Minn. — NASA astronaut Josh Cassada from White Bear Lake is officially in space, making his way to the International Space Station. It's around a 29-hour journey from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Cassada and three other crew members departed Wednesday.
This is the sixth time NASA and private aerospace company SpaceX have partnered on a mission. This one is called Crew-5.
The launch aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft also includes fellow NASA astronaut Nicole Mann, Roscosmos cosmonaut Anna Kikina and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Koichi Wakata.
Cassada grew up in White Bear Lake and trained as a U.S. Navy Test pilot before being chosen by NASA in 2013. After completing training in 2015, he served as a capsule communicator in Mission Control and also helped in developing the Orion spacecraft. He is also a physicist, earning his Physics B.A. at Albion College and his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester.
Within under an hour of being in space, Cassada shared a hopeful message alongside a tethered Einstein doll.
"We're here to tell you there's plenty of gravity up here," Cassada said. "We live in the same world. We live in the same universe. Sometimes we experience it in a very different way from our neighbors. If we can all keep that in mind so we can all continue to do absolutely amazing things, do it together."
With Mann on board, this is the first time in history a Native American woman is in space.
"It's incredibly important to have that representation for our youth," said Rica Rivera, a member of Seneca Nation of Indians who works with youth in grades 1-12 after school at the Division of Indian Work in south Minneapolis.
"Earth alone is so important to Native people, taking care of it, but to see somebody who looks like our youth go and actually see Earth from that high, it's such a big thing," Rivera said. "Anything is possible … they need to know that."
NASA's official live broadcast of the launch can be viewed here.
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