Cady Coleman Bio: In Her Own Words – Video Exclusive, News, Photos

Cady Coleman is an American chemist who is best known for her time as a NASA astronaut, where she has logged a total of 180 days in space. This Cady Coleman biography will let the astronaut tell her story in her own words.

Cady Coleman Bio: Early Life, Education, Age

Catherine “Cady” Coleman was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on December 14, 1960 (Cady Coleman age 56). She graduated from Wilbert Tucker Woodson High School in 1942. She attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology as part of the class of 1983 where she received her bachelor degree in chemistry. She attended graduate school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (class of 1991) while under commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. She received her doctorate in polymer science and engineering.

Cady Coleman Bio: Military Career

While on active duty she was stationed at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base where she worked as a research chemist. She also worked at the Long Duration Exposure Facility as a surface analysis consultant. Coleman volunteered for the centrifuge program at the Crew Systems Directorate of the Armstrong Aeromedical Laboratory. The experimental studies in the program tested her endurance and tolerance. She remained with the air force until her retirement in November 2009. At the time of retirement she had reached the status of Colonel.

Cady Coleman Bio: NASA, UFO ‘Sighting’

Cady Coleman was recruited by NASA Astronaut Corps in 1992 where she initially worked from the Johnson Space Center. Coleman worked in numerous departments during her time at NASA. This includes work at the Astronaut Office Mission Support Branch, Astronaut Office Payloads and Habitability Branch and work as a CAPCOM in mission control and work as the Chief of Robotics for the Astronaut Office.

Coleman participated in three separate spaceflights while at NASA. She was as a mission specialist in the STS-73 flight in 1995 and in the STS-93 flight in 1999, which deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory. She was also the flight engineer for the Soyuz TMA-20 mission in 2011. The third mission was the longest in her career, where she logged a total of 159d 07h 17m in space.

She received a large amount of media coverage after her first mission when she reported seeing a U.F.O. to the Houston space center. She told uInterview that the statement had originated as a joke between her and fellow crew. “I don’t know if there are or not, I personally have not seen one,” Coleman told us regarding U.F.O’s. It’s our first day in space ever and we bounced off the ceiling, and I think I said something like, ‘Houston, we have an unidentified flying object and it is not very good.’ But not all the parts of what I said got translated to everybody, and a lot of people jumped to bad conclusions. Or not bad, but not what actually happened, at least to me.”

Coleman also trained as a backup astronaut for the STS-83, STS-128, and Soyuz TMA-19 missions. She was also an aquanaut as part of the NEEMO 7 crew aboard the Aquarius underwater laboratory.

Coleman retired from NASA on December 1, 2016. Among her final assignments were leading public-private partnership initiatives for the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA Headquarters.

Cady Coleman Bio: Personal Life, Marriage, Twitter Handle

Cady Coleman is married to Josh Simpson. Together, the couple have one child together.

Coleman is a recreational flute player and has taken several flutes with her into space. She has played the flute live from space on two separate occasions.

Her Twitter handle is @Astro_Cady.

Cady Coleman Bio: Science-Fiction, ‘The Space Between US’

Cady Coleman holds a position as part of the board of directors on the Hollywood Science Fiction Museum.

Coleman worked as an consultant on the sci-fi movie The Space Between Us, where she helped check the film for accuracy. In an exclusive interview Coleman discussed the importance of these films in sparking interest in space exploration. “The steps are slow,” Coleman said. “And that’s why a movie like this, I think it can sustain us. When a movie like The Martian came out, we can’t directly correlate it, but our astronaut applications went from 6,500 to 18,000. Because suddenly, living on Mars was real.” She also talked about the reality of living on another planet and space travel. “Well in some ways, people often ask me, “where did you go?” As if having a destination, is like everything. We’re in orbit around the earth, we go around the earth, sixteen times a day up on the space station. Right now there’s people living there. I guess it’s just the fact that living in space is a reality right now. We do have a space station, we’ve been living up there for more than 15 years, and actually more than that on other space stations. So it’s a reality, and yet, what we want to do is go further, and Mars is the logical place to think about living.”