Coleman, a NASA flight engineer, landed safely in Kazakhstan after working aboard the International Space Station with astronauts from Russia and Italy. Watch video
U.S. astronaut Cady Coleman speaks on a satellite phone to her family shortly after the landing with Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev and European Space Agency Astronaut Paolo Nespoli in the Soyuz TMA-20, southeast of the town of Dzhezkazgan, Kazakhstan, Tuesday. A Russian Soyuz capsule delivered an international trio of astronauts back to Earth on Tuesday after six months on the International Space Station, parachuting through clear skies toward a safe landing on the Kazakh steppe. SHELBURNE – Astronaut Dr. Catherine “Cady” Coleman is back on Earth and reunited with her husband and son in Houston.
Coleman, a NASA flight engineer, landed safely Tuesday in Kazakhstan after spending more than five months working aboard the International Space Station with astronauts from Russia and Italy. She returned to Houston, where she lives when not in Shelburne Falls.
“I’m just totally happy to have my wife back safe on the earth again. It’s great,” said Coleman’s husband, local artist Josh Simpson, calling The Republican from Houston. “It’s not quite the same talking to her on the phone or seeing her on TV as it is seeing her in person.”
“I think it’s been really hard for our ten-year-old son because it’s nice to have Mom close by,” he said. But Coleman read stories to her son every night before bed.
Simpson said raising their son on his own for five months was a challenge, but when Cady was training in Russia, Europe and Japan, she was gone for several weeks at a time.
“It got us used to the idea that Mom wasn’t going to be home for a long time,” he said. “But it’s no more difficult than spouses who stay home whose wives and husbands are deployed in the military.”
“We’re geographically challenged as a family,” he said. “So it’s nice to see each other. ... It’s a good recipe for a long and lasting relationship” because it means they have fewer arguments, he joked.
Simpson and Coleman met in 1990 when Coleman accidentally dialed the number to Simpson’s studio and he answered. They have been married for 13 years.
Simpson is a glass-blower and focuses his work on depictions of celestial bodies and flights in outer space.
“We represent two ends of a continuum,” said Simpson. “She actually explores space and ... I hope to inspire people to do the same.”
When Coleman landed in Kazakhstan, she called Simpson from a satellite phone and said the landing was “a lot of fun,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Johnson Space Center in Houston said Coleman, 50, and her colleagues will undergo medical rehabilitation and debriefing, which usually takes two to three weeks, so it is unclear when she will be back in Western Massachusetts.
While in orbit 200 miles above the planet, the crew of Expedition 27 performed “more than 150 microgravity experiments in human research; biology and biotechnology; physical and materials science; technology development; and Earth and space sciences,” according to a NASA press release.
The trio included commander Dmitry Kondratyev of Russia and Italian engineer Paolo Nespoli.
When she wasn’t expanding our planet’s understanding of science, Coleman was broadening the minds of students on terra firma.
Coleman delivered a recorded commencement address to graduates of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst from aboard the ISS, during which she encouraged graduates to work together to save a fragile world.
In March, she appeared live from the station at Springfield Technical Community College. She answered questions from students at the college, STEM Middle Academy in Springfield and the Lt. Elmer J. McMahon Elementary School and Dr. Marcella R. Kelly Elementary School in Holyoke.
In 1983, Coleman joined the U.S. Air Force, where she was commissioned as a 2nd Lt. and retired in 2009 as a captain. She began working for NASA after receiving her doctorate in polymer science and engineering from Umass Amherst in 1991.
“This is the culmination of a lifetime of hard work,” said Simpson. “I totally support her. I think it’s fantastic.”