Robert Cabana

Col. Robert Cabana, USMC (Ret.), is a former NASA astronaut and retired Marine pilot and test pilot with more than 7,000 hours in over 50 different types of aircraft. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps after graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1971 with a degree in mathematics. In September 2000, after 16 years as an active astronaut, he retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel after accepting a senior executive service position for NASA as the manager for international operations of the International Space Station program. He most recently served as the NASA associate administrator in Washington, D.C., the highest-ranking career civil servant, retiring from NASA at the end of 2023 after 38 years with the agency. He is a veteran of four space shuttle missions, serving twice as pilot on Discovery on STS-41 and STS-53, and commanding Columbia on STS-65 and Endeavour on STS-88, the first International Space Station assembly mission. Key assignments in his career included chief of the Astronaut Office, director of Flight Crew Operations, deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, director of NASA’s Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and 12 ½ years as director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he led the team through the safe flyout of the final 12 shuttle missions and the transition to the vibrant multi-user spaceport that it is today. He is currently serving as the chairman of the International Space Station Advisory Committee and as a part-time senior advisor to Kam Ghaffarian and iBX.