Josh Cassada has been sent for training by Nasa which could see him sent to Mars or landing on an asteroid. Cassada current chief technology officer and co-founder of a firm called Quantum Opus, based in Michigan, that operates in the field of quantum optics.

His day job is to provide “low-loss, high-speed photon detectors that will enable next-generation experiments in quantum optics, optical quantum computation, single-photon communication, low-flux biophotonics, and remote sensing.”

He is a former navy pilot and has an advanced degree in physics from the University of Rochester.