ALUMNI INNOVATORS :

A Life of Learning

Cady Coleman, 48, is now training for an International Space Station mission slated for late 2010, although she is a backup for a July 2009 mission.

As Cady Coleman sees it, the life of an astronaut is a life of learning.

For her two space shuttle missions, Coleman needed to be ready to conduct an array of demanding scientific experiments and was responsible for deploying the $1.3 billion Chandra telescope.

“Happily, I pushed the button at the right time,” Coleman noted with a chuckle.

Today, as she prepares for a six-month mission on the International Space Station, Coleman is always learning, with topics ranging from the rarified science of space travel to pragmatic, living-in-space matters.

“I’m developing plumbing and electrical skills. My husband is pretty excited about that. I’m taking emergency medicine courses as well.”

When Cady Coleman thinks about learning, she thinks of the University of Massachusetts.

“What I learned at UMass was how to learn—how to step back and look at the big picture. The skills I learned at UMass, I use every day as an astronaut,” said Coleman, who earned her doctorate in polymer science in 1991.

Looking back at the road that took her to NASA and to the launching pad at Cape Canaveral, Coleman remembers a pivotal step that occurred on the Amherst campus.

“I remember calling someone I knew from ROTC who was already in the Air Force and wanted to be an astronaut as well. We ended up being partners in this endeavor and are both astronauts today. I can specifically remember making that phone call from the basement in Goessmann,” Coleman said, referring to a campus science building.

The idea of becoming an astronaut first crossed Coleman’s mind when she was an undergraduate at MIT. Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, spoke on campus, and in the mind of a young undergraduate, this was the perfect career: fusing a love for science with an impulse to explore.

“It became clear that if you wanted to be an astronaut, you needed a professional degree, so the next thing became finding a world-class place to study polymer science. For me, that was UMass. And when I was at UMass, I became attentive to applying to the astronaut program.”

When NASA looked at the application of the young woman with degrees from MIT and UMass—who set endurance records on the centrifuge—the answer was “Yes,” and Coleman reported to the Johnson Space Center in 1992.

Three years later, on October 20, 1995, Coleman was part of a crew that flew the Space Shuttle Columbia into orbit for a 15-day mission focused on microgravity experimentation. The UMass graduate studied how liquids behave in low gravity, producing findings that have influenced the design of space vehicles.

In 1999, Coleman was back in space, again on Columbia, for a five-day mission that included deploying the Chandra X-ray Observatory.

“That telescope is still out there and is still sending images back and has expanded our view of the universe in ways that are astounding. We’re learning more about black holes and dark matter. Everything you see about black holes on CNN probably comes from Chandra. I was thrilled and proud to be part of the team that deployed it. I love the fact that it’s alive and real. It’s like the birth of a child.”

Coleman, 48, is now training for an International Space Station mission slated for late 2010, although she is a backup for a July 2009 mission.

What would it be like to spend six months in space?

“I think of it as the most amazing and exciting opportunity I could imagine. I see the Space Station as the next step in returning to the moon and eventually going on to Mars. I really doubt that I will be one of the people who goes to the moon or to Mars, but for the next generation to do that, we need people who are figuring out how to live in space.”

Coleman—who lives in western Massachusetts with her husband, glass artist Josh Simpson, and their son, Jamey— when not in Houston or training in other parts of the world, says UMass played a major role in her life and is shaping a better future.

“The future of our planet is very exciting, but at the same time, it is daunting and challenging. We have some very large problems to solve, and we need the next generation to be ready to solve those problems—and the way you do that is to get an education at an institution like the University of Massachusetts.”