Cassidy is a NASA astronaut, a veteran of the STS-127 Space Shuttle mission in 2009, the Expedition 35/36 long duration mission on the International Space Station in 2013, and the Expedition 62/63 mission in 2020. A Navy SEAL, Cassidy is a Captain in the U.S. Navy and was the former Chief of the Astronaut Office for NASA from July 2015 to June 2017. He holds a Master of Science in Ocean Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On STS-127, he became the 500th person to reach space.