A firm believer in that part of the human spirit that needs to know the universe, Coleman doesn't feel that the end of the shuttle program means the end of space exploration.
Astronaut Cady Coleman looks skyward after landing from her most recent space mission in June.Catherine “Cady” Coleman was not one of the four astronauts who rocketed into space Friday aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. If she had been, the veteran of three shuttle flights would have been less nervous.
“Sitting on the rocket, that doesn’t make me nervous,” she said in a telephone interview from Florida. “Watching makes me nervous. It’s so loud and bright. You can barely look at it.”
Although she is retired as a captain in the Air Force, astronaut Coleman is still an active employee of NASA, where she has worked since earning her Ph.D. in polymer science and engineering at the University of Massachusetts in 1991. On Friday, the Shelburne Falls resident was in Cape Canaveral with her husband, glass artist Josh Simpson, and their ten-year-old son, Jamey, to watch the last flight in the 30-year history of the space shuttle.
Coleman, 50, has been into space three times, most recently for a five-month stint aboard the International Space Station, where she tested drugs for osteoporosis in zero gravity during a mission that began on Dec. 15, 2010 with a trip to space on a Russian rocket and ended about six weeks ago. Coleman flew missions on the space shuttle Columbia in 1995 and 1999.
Coleman said she was officially doing media relations work for NASA surrounding the Atlantis lift-off. Although there was some sadness watching the last shuttle blast-off, Coleman said she had mixed feeling about the experience.
“It’s just part of what needs to be,” she said.
While many boys grew up wanting to be astronauts, Coleman said that didn’t seem a viable option for girls when she was young. A meeting with astronaut Sally Ride while Coleman was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology changed that.
“I though, ‘Wow! I want that job!’” she recalled.
A firm believe in that part of the human spirit that needs to know the universe, Coleman doesn’t feel that the end of the shuttle program means the end of space exploration.
“You can’t keep people from doing it,” she said. “It’s part of our work.”
She hesitated when asked if she would be part of a lunar expedition or a journey to Mars, but only because Coleman feels those projects are too far in the future to suit her.
“I’m actually sure people will go there,” she said.
Coleman expects to return with her family to Shelburne Falls next week for a more down-to-earth existence.
She is one of several astronauts with ties to Western Massachusetts. Lt. Col. Byron Lichtenberg was a pilot a an Air National Guard fighter wing out of Barnes Municipal Airport in Westfield before he flew for NASA. Story Musgrave, who at 61 was the oldest person to go into space when he flew aboard the shuttle Columbia in 1996, grew up in Stockbridge. Daniel T. Barry and Susan J. Helms, two astronauts who flew on the same mission in 2001, both have local ties. Helms lived in Holyoke for several years and Barry grew up in South Hadley.