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'Catherine Grace "Cady" Coleman' (born December 14, 1960, in Charleston, South Carolina) is a colonel in the United States Air Force and an astronaut.

Contents

Education

Military career

NASA career

Personal

Notes

Education

She received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983.

Military career

After completing her regular education, she joined the Air Force as a second lieutenant while continuing her graduate work at the University of Massachusetts. In 1988 she entered active duty at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a research chemist. During her work she also participated at the analysis of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) experiment launched with STS-41-C and retrieved with STS-32. In 1991 she received her doctorate in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts.

NASA career

She was selected by NASA in 1992 to become a mission specialist astronaut. She has taken part in two space shuttle missions so far. In 1995 she was a member of the STS-73 crew on the scientific mission USML-1 with experiments including biotechnology, combustion science and the physics of fluids. She also trained for the mission STS-83 to be the backup for Donald A. Thomas; however, as he recovered on time, she did not fly that mission. STS-93 was Coleman's second space flight, in 1999. She was mission specialist in charge of placing the Chandra X-ray Observatory in orbit using the shuttle's robotic arm.^[1][2]
Coleman currently serves as chief of robotic arm operations and training for all space shuttle and International Space Station missions. During mission STS-116, when a station solar panel array became stuck in mid-retraction, Coleman led the team responsible for devising its recovery. The solution involved using the station's robotic arm to deploy spacewalking astronauts who manually straightened effected elements of the array.

Personal

Coleman is married to glass artist Josh Simpson.

Notes

1. NASA biography
2. Spacefacts biography of Catherine Coleman