Catherine Coleman

Catherine Grace "Cady" Coleman (born December 14, 1960) is an American chemist, engineer, former United States Air Force colonel, and retired NASA astronaut. She is a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions, and departed the International Space Station on May 23, 2011, as a crew member of Expedition 27 after logging 159 days in space.

Education Coleman graduated from Wilbert Tucker Woodson High School, Fairfax, Virginia, in 1978. then received a Ph.D. degree in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1991. As an undergraduate, she was a member of the intercollegiate rowing crew and was a resident of Baker House.

Military career Coleman continued to pursue her PhD at the University of Massachusetts Amherst as a second lieutenant. In 1988, she entered active duty at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a research chemist. During her work, she participated as a surface analysis consultant on the NASA Long Duration Exposure Facility experiment. In 1991, she received her doctorate in polymer science and engineering. In October 2004, Coleman served as an aquanaut during the NEEMO 7 mission aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory, living and working underwater for eleven days.

Coleman was assigned as a backup U.S. crew member for Expeditions 19, 20 and 21 and served as a backup crew member for Expeditions 24 and 25 as part of her training for Expedition 26.

Coleman launched on December 15, 2010 (December 16, 2010 Baikonur time), aboard Soyuz TMA-20 to join the Expedition 26 mission aboard the International Space Station. She retired from NASA on December 1, 2016.

Spaceflight experience

STS-73 on Space Shuttle Columbia (October 20 to November 5, 1995) was the second United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-2) mission. The mission focused on materials science, biotechnology, combustion science, the physics of fluids, and numerous scientific experiments housed in the pressurized Spacelab module. In completing her first space flight, Coleman orbited the Earth 256 times, traveled over 6 million miles, and logged a total of 15 days, 21 hours, 52 minutes and 21 seconds in space.

STS-93 on Columbia (July 22 to 27, 1999) was a five-day mission during which Coleman was the lead mission specialist for the deployment of the Chandra X-ray Observatory. Designed to conduct comprehensive studies of the universe, the telescope will enable scientists to study exotic phenomena such as exploding stars, quasars, and black holes. Mission duration was 118 hours and 50 minutes.

Soyuz TMA-20 / Expedition 26/27 (December 15, 2010, to May 23, 2011) was an extended duration mission to the International Space Station.

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".

In 2018, she gave a graduation address to Carter Lynch, the sole graduate of Cuttyhunk Elementary School, on Cuttyhunk Island, Massachusetts.

In 2019 the Irish postal service An Post issued a set of commemorative stamps for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landings, Catherine Coleman is featured alongside fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Eileen Collins.