posted 06-21-2017 01:24 PM            

Capt. Cassidy described the process of starting with 18,000 applications and choosing 120 applicants to invite to Houston for a week long interview process, being on the selection committee, inviting 50 of the applicants back to Houston for a second interview and making the final selection of 12 astronaut candidates.

He also talked about sitting on the selection committee for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and said that two new CSA astronauts would be announced in a few weeks and that, while he knew who the two new CSA astronauts are, he could not give their names prior to the CSA's public announcement.

posted 06-21-2017 04:05 PM               

Cassidy added that he was not a fan of one-year missions, like the one Scott Kelly flew in 2015–2016. He noted Kelly left the astronaut corps shortly after returning from that mission, and that any future astronauts who flew one-year flights would likely do the same. While NASA promoted Kelly’s one-year flight, and the potential for future ones, as a way to gain biomedical data for future Mars missions, Cassidy thought that the sample size would be too small to be very useful.