Matthew Dominick

Matthew Stuart Dominick grew up in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, and built his path to spaceflight the classic aviator's way, through the cockpit and the flight-test hangar rather than the laboratory. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of San Diego and later a master's in systems engineering from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, credentials that paired with a demanding career as a U.S. Navy aviator and test pilot. By the time NASA came calling he had logged more than 1,600 hours in some two dozen aircraft types, hundreds of carrier-arrested landings, and dozens of combat missions, the kind of resume that made him a natural fit when NASA selected him for Astronaut Group 22 in June 2017. He completed the two years of candidate training and joined the active corps awaiting his first flight assignment.

That assignment turned out to be a command. Dominick was named commander of NASA's SpaceX Crew-8 mission, launching aboard the Crew Dragon Endeavour in early March 2024. What was planned as a roughly six-month increment stretched into a long-duration stay of about 235 days, spanning Expeditions 70, 71, and 72 aboard the International Space Station, before the capsule splashed down off the Florida coast on October 25, 2024. It was his only flight to date, but it made an outsized impression, in part because of what he did with a camera. Mentored in orbital technique before launch by veteran astronaut Don Pettit, Dominick turned the station's cupola into a photography studio, capturing time-lapse sequences of auroras rippling over the night side of Earth, storms lit from within, and orbital sunrises. He shared thousands of these images on his social channels and even took part in a live astrophotography class broadcast from orbit, walking followers through his camera settings and creative process.

Because Dominick remains an active NASA astronaut, his career is still being written; he holds no headline records but has become one of the agency's most visible public faces precisely through the artistry of his orbital imagery, which reached audiences far beyond the usual spaceflight community. His photographs have been widely republished and have helped a new generation see low Earth orbit as a place of everyday wonder rather than abstraction. Back on the ground, he continues to serve within the astronaut office, eligible for future assignments as NASA advances its plans for the Moon and, eventually, Mars. For a first-time flier, a single 235-day command that doubled as a viral chronicle of the view from the cupola is a distinctive debut, and it positions Dominick as a seasoned long-duration crew member for whatever the agency asks of him next.