Catherine Coleman

Did You Know?

• Coleman was an exchange student at Røyken Upper Secondary School in Norway in 1978–1979 with the AFS Intercultural Programs.
• She served as an aquanaut during the NEEMO 7 mission in October 2004, living and working underwater for eleven days.
• In 2019, the Irish postal service An Post featured Coleman alongside Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Eileen Collins on a set of commemorative stamps for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings.

Education

Cady Coleman finished high school in Fairfax, Virginia, in 1978 and spent the following year as an exchange student in Norway. She earned a chemistry degree from MIT in 1983, where she rowed crew and lived in Baker House, and was commissioned through Air Force ROTC. She went on to get a Ph.D. in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1991, studying under Thomas J. McCarthy.

NASA career

Coleman joined NASA’s astronaut corps in 1992. Her first mission was STS-73 in 1995, a Spacelab flight focused on materials science, biotechnology, combustion, and fluid physics. In 1999, she flew on STS-93 as lead mission specialist, overseeing the deployment of the Chandra X-ray Observatory from the shuttle’s cargo bay. She later became Chief of Robotics for the Astronaut Office, handling robotic arm operations and training for shuttle and station missions. In 2004, she spent eleven days underwater as an aquanaut on the NEEMO 7 mission. She trained as a backup crew member for Expeditions 19 through 21 and again for 24 and 25 before launching on Soyuz TMA-20 in December 2010 for Expedition 26. She returned from the station in May 2011 after 159 days in space. Coleman retired from NASA in December 2016.

Personal

Coleman is married to glass artist Josh Simpson who lives in Massachusetts. They have two sons Jamey (born 2002) and Cady. She is part of the band Bandella, which also includes fellow NASA astronaut Stephen Robinson, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Micki Pettit (wife of the astronaut Donald Pettit). Coleman is a flute player and has taken several flutes with her to the ISS, including a pennywhistle from Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains, an old Irish flute from Matt Molloy of The Chieftains, and a flute from Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull.

On February 15, 2011, she played one of the instruments live from orbit on National Public Radio. On April 12, 2011, she played a duet with Ian Anderson to honour Yuri Gagarin's 50th anniversary of his flight. She first recorded her part, which later on Anderson joined while on tour in Perm. On May 13 of that year, Coleman delivered a taped commencement address to the class of 2011 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

As do many other astronauts, Coleman holds an amateur radio license (callsign: KC5ZTH). As of 2015, she is also known to be working as a guest speaker at the Baylor College of Medicine, for the children's program 'Saturday Morning Science'.