Above the Glass Ceiling

Cady Coleman ’91PhD has seen it all—literally. A retired astronaut and Air Force colonel who lived for six months on the International Space Station, she’s had a view of the planet few human beings get to have. Coleman—who has spoken at her alma mater and even appeared on a postage stamp—recently discussed her experiences in the memoir Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change (Penguin Life, 2024). The book covers everything from her path to becoming an astronaut to the ongoing struggle for gender equity in her field, her unconventional marriage, parenting from space, and being a member of an all-astronaut band (yes, really!). Excerpts from her book were adapted in The Boston Globe, and we share a few highlights of that piece here. 

0700 GMT, International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth 

Slowly, I open my eyes. I’m still here. That miraculous fact hits me the moment I wake up, every morning, floating. I’m in space. And I’ll be in space tomorrow and the next day, and the next. I LIVE here. It’s a kind of bubbly, never-gets-old feeling that banishes any notion of slipping back into sleep. 

My next thought: Which way is up? 

Many astronauts hook their sleeping bags securely to the wall, but I like to sleep with my bag untethered. I tuck my knees to my chest, zip the sleeping bag up so it holds me in a ball, and float off to sleep, literally. So when I wake up, adrift, it takes a minute to figure out where I am. 

Today, my cheek is bobbing against something solid, and my eyes focus on a small barcode sticker. Aha! I’m under my desk—a tiny shelf just big enough for my laptop computer. Looking up, I see my photographs, each Velcroed to the wall. The impish grin of my 10-year-old son, Jamey. The warm smile of my husband, Josh. My whole family, posing on the rocks on Rhode Island, the way we did every summer. 

Jamey’s stuffed tiger, Hobbes, is tethered with a bungee cord. If my son couldn’t come with me to space, at least he knows that Hobbes is up here keeping an eye on me. It means a lot to both of us. 

…

My name is Cady Coleman, and I am an astronaut. Even after 24 years at NASA, two space shuttle missions, and six months living aboard the International Space Station, it thrills me to say those words, and yet there is a part of me that’s still surprised by them. Like many astronauts, I tend to think of myself as “unexpected.” We can’t help but wonder, How did I get to do THIS? 

Cady Coleman, astronaut, was not something I doodled in the margins of my grade school textbooks or confided in my girlfriends as a teenager. By the time I got to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979 to pursue a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, only six women had been selected as NASA astronauts. It never occurred to me that I could be that, until one day during my junior year I met someone who was that: Sally Ride. 

She would be part of the crew for one of the upcoming space shuttle flights, making her the first American woman in space. A poster announced she would be giving a talk on campus. A woman speaker was still a novelty at MIT in the spring of 1982. But a woman astronaut? I couldn’t pass up a chance to meet her. 

Seeing Sally Ride on the stage that day turned a possibility into a reality — a reality that could include me. She was a young, bright-eyed woman, with wavy brown hair kind of like mine, wearing a blue flight suit. I was captivated. And I was struck by her obvious expertise. She had this amazing job where she got to fly jets and practice spacewalking and be assigned to go on missions, yet it clearly counted that she was an accomplished astrophysicist, too. A scientist who used her knowledge and skills to solve important challenges. A scientist who was also an adventurer and part of a crew with a mission. 

An utterly unexpected idea popped into my head: Maybe I — Cady Coleman — could have that job.

…  

“Come on,” I said to my son years ago. “It’s about to start.” 

Jamey and I were attending a NASA event in Houston, and I was running a little late. But Jamey, then 4, had stopped outside the convention center doors, and was staring up at a life-size cardboard cutout of an astronaut wearing a spacesuit. 

“Is that you, Mommy?” 

I shook my head, smiling. “No, sweetie, that’s not me.” 

“Then whose mommy is it?” 

I hugged my son close. It was not lost on me how much it means for a little boy to automatically assume that an astronaut is, by default, someone’s mother—a woman, not a man. It certainly was not a default for much of my career—far from it. 

Read the full excerpt in The Boston Globe, and read Coleman’s memoir for the complete story. (Need Globe access? Check out these resources.)