My astronaut journey to six months in space. And what I took back home to Western Mass.

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.

I open the door to my cabin and, with a gentle push, I’m flying through the lab and into Node 1, the center of the space station. In space, the lightest touch of a finger can propel you across a module, and on this mission the International Space Station has 10, each the size of a bus.

This morning, as I fly up to the cupola, I see we’re over the Pacific. My entire field of vision is filled with the bright blue ocean-covered beauty of the planet I call home. I still can’t get used to the idea that I am one of only six human beings who are currently not on planet Earth.

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.

“CAPCOM, YOU ARE GO FOR LAUNCH!” The words blared into my headset. In 2001, as one of my astronaut duties, I was working as a CAPCOM — a liaison between NASA’s Mission Control and the astronauts in space.

The minimum qualifications for becoming an astronaut these days are having a master’s degree in a technical field and passing the flight physical. I’d managed to nail those prerequisites by earning my PhD in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serving and working in the Air Force; in those years I also learned to scuba dive, got my pilot’s license, and joined the centrifuge testing panel to show myself and NASA that I knew how to be a medical subject. (The centrifuge program tests what happens to the human body and to various kinds of equipment in high-acceleration situations, up to 9gs — nine times the force of gravity.) Becoming an astronaut was a years-long career path, and a multi-pronged effort.

We sit in Mission Control, which looks just like you’ve seen in the movies — rows of workstations, each surrounded by a cluster of monitors, and big screens on the front wall showing maps and critical data.

It’s up to the CAPCOM to translate messages into terms that will make sense to the astronauts in space, and to stand up for their needs or perspectives with the folks on the ground, if necessary. It’s a demanding role, even when you’re working on simulations. Sims are essential training for crew members and for Mission Control, so the idea is to make them as real as possible. Once you enter Mission Control and put on your headset, you’re on, for your nine-hour shift. Lunch is eaten at your console. And you can’t just take a break when you feel like it to get a cup of coffee, use the bathroom — or, in my case, pump milk for your kid.

That year I was bridging worlds in more ways than one. I was a new mother, with a breast-feeding baby boy named Jamey. And I was also a full-time astronaut. So when I heard “CAPCOM, you are GO for launch!” I knew it had nothing to do with rockets; it was directed at me. With a quick nod to the flight director, I’d sprint for the door.

The closest place to pump was the janitors’ closet. Luckily, at the time, all the janitors in Mission Control were women, and I knew them from my many years working there. They seemed to love hosting a breast-feeding astronaut. One woman brought in flowers, and another a stack of magazines.

The supervisors were generally accommodating too. It’s not easy having conversations about pumping with male colleagues (even when carefully avoiding the words breast and milk to minimize the squirm factor), but it was quickly apparent that they liked being part of my family solution. But let’s be clear: This was only one of countless such arrangements that I had to come up with, negotiate, and execute seamlessly to be a mother while also fulfilling a role that, quite frankly, was never designed for people like me. Thankfully, I wasn’t the first to attempt this feat of world bridging, and I had role models and supporters to turn to.

But just because something is possible doesn’t make it easy, especially when it isn’t to your advantage to advertise you don’t fit the mold. And when it came to my family life, that had been true for me even before Jamey came along.

His father, Josh, and I have never had a conventional relationship. From the moment our eyes met across his art studio and it was clear to us both that this was something, it was also clear that this something would not be following the typical path that many serious relationships take. Certainly, we realized early on that we wouldn’t be living together anytime soon. Josh has an established glass studio in Western Massachusetts, where he employs a dedicated group of folks from our local community. He shared custody of his son, Josiah, whose mother lived nearby. And me? Being an astronaut meant that Houston would be my home for the foreseeable future. Neither of us could imagine asking the other to move!

A few years after we got married, Josh and I both decided we wanted to have a baby. I knew other women astronauts who had kids. Kathy Thornton had three, and when we flew together on the Space Shuttle Columbia STS–73 mission they were all still young. And she was a geographically single parent, as I would be. She and Steve had commuted between Virginia and Houston for years. So I didn’t worry too much about the geographical challenges of adding a baby to our already complicated long-distance marriage.

The first crew was due to launch to the new space station just after Jamey was born, and I wanted to be available when they started selecting the next wave of crews. I’d been eagerly watching the assembly of the giant modular structure since it began in November 1998. The idea of actually living in space — not just spending a week or two aboard the space shuttle — enthralled me, and doing that as part of an international crew performing experiments seemed like the future we had been working toward for years.

Of course, I knew I wouldn’t be able to take a baby with me, but — well, I figured we’d work it out when the time came.

ANYONE WHO’S BALANCED parenthood with a demanding job can probably guess what came next.

When I returned to Houston with Jamey that fall, I discovered just how challenging it would be to juggle my astronaut duties with being a geographically single mom, even with the support of a nanny for the first few months and, later, day care. Like many moms describe, I’d arrive at work already feeling like I’d worked a full day. I got pretty good at the run-and-pump routine during simulations. During actual shuttle missions, the hours were long and consuming, so usually I’d send Jamey to Massachusetts with Josh, and send my milk up there on dry ice. Sprinting to the FedEx office was frequently involved.

We settled into a rhythm of sorts during Jamey’s first few years, with Josh visiting in Houston, me going up to Massachusetts whenever possible, and Jamey traveling back and forth with one or the other of us.

Was it a perfect arrangement? No, but it worked. Josh and I were a team, trading off our parenting responsibilities so we could both pursue the work we were passionate about. I still worried that I was missing something that really mattered. One time Josh sent me a photo of a 2-year-old Jamey hugging the television, because he’d heard his mom’s voice on the NASA TV channel. I laughed and cried when I saw that picture.

Goodbyes were hard. It never gets easier to leave your baby, or your husband, or your home. Josh and Jamey often dropped me at the airport in Hartford, an hour from our house. With some affection, I think, the nice ladies at the United counter used to refer to me as “the astronaut who cries at the airport.”

SOMETIMES OUR JUGGLING ACT just seemed too complicated. Like the time I’d been invited to do one of the more nerve-racking duties of my professional life. I’m not talking about a space launch or jumping out of a plane. I’m talking about throwing out the first pitch in front of tens of thousands of baseball fans at Boston’s Fenway Park.

It was a Friday night and the Houston Astros were playing the Boston Red Sox. Beside me was my friend Stephanie Wilson, a fellow astronaut whose pitching skill far exceeded mine. As the strains of the national anthem faded, I nervously pulled my Houston Astros cap down to shield my eyes from the glare of the stadium lights.

I glanced at Stephanie, since we’d planned to throw at the same time, but she’d gotten carried away and had already thrown her pitch. Calling on my very best compartmentalization skills, I focused all my energy into my left arm and threw the ball. To my astonishment, it went into the catcher’s glove. And the glove was above the plate. Feeling victorious, I made my way up into the stands and took my seat.

I was enjoying the energy in the stands during the game when my cellphone rang. It was Andy Thomas, the deputy chief of the Astronaut Office.

“Cady, the NASA administrator is going to Norway on his European trip, where he’ll present a Norwegian flag that was flown up on the space shuttle to the king. We just realized that you’re the one who flew that flag on STS–93. He asked if you’d like to go with him.”

Would I like to? I had to. First, this was a request straight from the head of NASA. And second, Norway was like a second home to me. I had spent a year there as an exchange student, and I still spoke fluent Norwegian. I told him I was honored by the invitation, but needed to figure out family logistics first.

“OK, get back to us ASAP,” he said. “It’s wheels up on Sunday, and you’d need to get to Washington.”

Sunday. Two days away. I’d be back in Houston, but I’d have Jamey, then almost 4, with me. Josh was on a trip that week. He’d be flying home Sunday, coincidentally changing planes in Houston. But I’d already be on my way to Washington. Someone impeccably trustworthy and capable would need to complete a handoff of Jamey to Josh in the middle of that airport, while Josh was changing planes. What if Josh’s flight was late? Or canceled? And I was in the air and couldn’t be reached? I called Josh.

“Honey, I don’t think I can figure this one out,” I said. Josh, however, knew how much this trip mattered to me. “You can figure anything out,” he told me. “Why don’t you just say yes, and we’ll find a way.”

And we did. The wife of one of my fellow astronauts heard about my situation. She was a seasoned traveler herself and knew Jamey well, so she volunteered to take him to the airport, armed with plans B and C and D and E and F in case something went wrong. Josh came out through security and found her at the curb, expertly fending off security guards who wanted her to move her car. And I got to go to Norway and talk with King Harald. I learned he was an avid sailor, and our conversation centered around the similarities between his experiences sailing across the vast ocean and mine sailing around our planet in a spaceship.

That handoff was the kind of scenario that played out dozens, maybe hundreds, of times during the 26 years Josh and I commuted between Massachusetts and Texas. I was given detailed instruction manuals for all the complex procedures I performed as part of my job. But no one gives you an instruction manual for being a parent. You have to figure it out for yourself — whether the challenge is handing off a small human at a busy airport or navigating the daily irritation that the NASA day care opened at 7 a.m. and Mission Control shifts started at — you guessed it — 7 a.m. in a building located eight minutes away by car.

Having prearranged with my CAPCOM partner, I would read the mission logs at 5 a.m. from home so I wouldn’t be behind when I arrived breathless at 7:10, late through no fault of my own but knowing I was being judged for it anyway.

Eventually, as a parent with a career, you realize your budget of creative problem-solving and decision-making energy is finite, and has to be split between work and family. You learn to evaluate all your resources, mental and otherwise, and simplify and streamline what you can to stretch that budget further. You have to accept that you won’t always please everyone, and that tomorrow you’ll wake up and do it all over again.

“I’M SO EXCITED TO MEET YOU!” the woman exclaimed. She and her friend had stopped me in the hallway at a mommy bloggers convention in California, where I’d been invited to speak. Her next words took me aback. “You! You’re the sh*ttiest mom ever! You actually left your baby on the planet and went to space!”

Before you start imagining an angry defense on my behalf, let me clarify that this was said with the utmost warmth and a great deal of admiration. The two women had created a popular blog about being a “Sh*tty Mom,” where they humorously subverted the ideals of motherhood and offered refreshingly honest stories of what it’s really like raising a family.

But her lighthearted comment pointed to a deeper truth — that many of us secretly fear we’re terrible parents, and that our choices and mistakes are scarring our kids for life. To this day, Josh and I look at each other and say, “Well, so far Jamey hasn’t grown up to be an ax murderer, so I guess we did something right?”

Seriously, though, most of us need reassurance about our parenting prowess at times. The reassurance of my siblings helped. But I still worried sometimes that I was doing things a “good” mom would never do. Even if we put aside leaving the planet (which I didn’t actually do until my baby was 10), what kind of mom leaves her 2-year-old behind for two and a half months to go hunting for meteorites in the Antarctic? Yep, me.

The purpose of the annual Antarctic Search for Meteorites is to collect meteorites and increase the number available for research. The teams are made up of about a dozen meteorite scientists and mountaineers, plus the occasional astronaut.

When I told Josh I’d been selected for the expedition, he was almost as excited as I was. So much so that I finally said: “Sweetie, you do realize I’m not taking the baby with me, right?”

For a moment, he feigned surprise, as though he really hadn’t thought it through, but then he hugged me and assured me that he and Jamey would be just fine. For the millionth time, I thanked the universe for finding me a partner who in his own creative life was also an explorer at heart and enthusiastically supported the very unusual demands of my job. Even when Josh broke his leg just weeks before my departure, he still insisted I should go.

Despite missing my family, I cherished my time at the end of the Earth. I took photos and videos to show Jamey, including ones with Petey, his treasured stuffed penguin. Because we could only relay emails once a week, and the satellite phone cost $6 a minute, I’d also recorded videos of me reading Jamey’s favorite books to keep him company while I was gone.

Becoming a mother had changed me, but it hadn’t changed my eagerness and ability to undertake important missions, on or off the planet. Even as I tried hard not to let my job compromise my ability to be a mother, I worked equally hard to ensure that being a mother didn’t compromise my ability to do my job as an astronaut.

Sometimes, I felt as if I had to make it look like I was not just managing it all, but doing so with ease, for fear that if I showed even a hint of overwhelm, it would confirm the low expectations that women and people of color often face in a job like mine. To combat those attitudes, many of us feel the need to be not just good but exceptional. The fact that change is so slow, that this is still a reality in today’s world, angers and disappoints me.

Fortunately, I found that most people in the Astronaut Office were supportive and understanding. Some of my colleagues became my indispensable allies. When one of my friends from STS–93 (the space shuttle mission I’d been on that deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory into orbit) became the lead astronaut for the space station, I learned why I hadn’t yet been assigned to a long-duration ISS mission: Some of the higher-ups were concerned that my “alternative” living situation would make it harder for me to be separated from my family during the years of training around the world and then the six months in space. The consensus was that I was more suited to space shuttle missions, typically a week or two long.

I was pissed. Wouldn’t my 15-year track record of maintaining a commuting relationship make me better qualified for that aspect of the job than most astronauts, since I was accustomed to living apart from my family? Hadn’t I proved that I was capable of balancing my mission and my personal life?

The higher-ups, all men at that time, didn’t ask me how or whether I could manage these situations, they just made decisions on my behalf, assuming they knew when I would be ready for another mission after having a baby. No one seemed to hesitate to assign the male astronauts because they had families at home.

My friend suggested accepting a job assignment within the ISS branch, making my capabilities more visible to ISS management. It seemed like a good idea, and I wanted to learn more about working on the space station.

One of my other allies, Chris Hadfield, was chief of robotics while I was working in the ISS branch, but his tenure was coming to an end. A classmate, bandmate (in the astronaut band Bandella), and friend, Chris has a rare aptitude and reputation for recognizing the skills people bring to the table, even when those people, or their skills, don’t conform to traditional expectations. As a test pilot, he was highly respected by the Astronaut Office management, most of whom were also test pilots. That gave him a platform to advocate for a number of other astronauts, including me, in a way that was pivotal to our careers.

He knew I’d just gotten the highest grade on the robotics exam, and felt my talents were being wasted. He made sure management knew that in addition to my robotics skills, I had the capability to knit the robotics community together at a critical time in space station construction, and he strongly recommended that I replace him. And so I became head of robotics — another important step toward being seen as a valuable ISS crew member.

THE LONG-AWAITED CALL came in 2007. Finally, I was going to get to live in space! In accepting the ISS mission, I wasn’t just committing to six months in space; I was also committing to several years of training — first as a backup for my friend Nicole Stott, the first step for any station astronaut, and then as a crew member myself. Much of this training would take place in Russia, as well as Japan, Canada, and Europe, meaning I’d be leaving Josh and Jamey behind for long stretches.

Josh and I talked through what the training and the mission might look like for us and for Jamey, and how we would make it all work. I also talked through the decision with my close friends and made a few phone calls to my siblings. The question that pulled at me the most was, “How can I do this and still be a good mom to Jamey?” But by the end of our conversations, I had come to the realization: This is who Jamey’s mom is. Part of my identity is that I’m an astronaut. And one of the best examples I can set for my son is to show him the importance of carrying out a mission I am passionate about, one to which I know I can bring unique contributions. For all these reasons, and grateful for the enthusiastic support of the people who meant the most to me, I said yes.

One of the things I figured out early is that just as a space mission needs a ground crew — engineers, flight controllers, medical staff, crew secretaries, food scientists, maintenance staff, and more — so do many of us in our personal and family lives. I have no doubt that I need other people to help me make the practical side of my life work, supporting me with everything from child care to travel planning.

Equally important and maybe less celebrated are those who help in less tangible ways: people who encourage me and make me feel valued; people who make me laugh; people who can listen and help me process challenging decisions; people who can just be there when things are tough. We all need people to lift us up and people to catch us. My ground crew — my community — means everything to me, and I’m grateful for the wealth of support I have, knowing that many people are not so fortunate.

In December 2010, after my three years of training around the world were complete, Jamey, stepson Josiah, and Josh flew to Baikonur, Kazakhstan, for my launch. Jamey, then 10, got a furry Russian hat to keep his ears warm in the bitter cold. He loved the hat but found all the waiting around pretty challenging. And it was hard for him (and me) that the quarantine rules limited our contact to walking outside in the frigid weather at arm’s length. After an unspoken nod from the doctor in charge of quarantine, who we affectionately referred to as “Dr. No,” we did sneak a couple of hugs behind a tree.

The morning before launch, I was washing my hair and getting ready for the day, when my crewmates came and banged on my door.

“Cady, come to breakfast!”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes!” I replied.

“No, you have to come now!” they insisted.

“OK, OK,” I said.

I headed down to the breakfast room, looking disheveled with my wet hair and hastily thrown-on clothes, only to find a sea of smiling faces watching through the glass wall. There must have been 50 people out there, and Jamey, Josiah, and Josh were in the middle. On the table was a cake. It was my 50th birthday. I waved at everyone as my crew and I cut my cake. I thought to myself that I was about to get the best birthday present ever: six whole months in space.

“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.

The space program has come a long way since 1962, when astronaut John Glenn testified before Congress that the absence of women in the program was “just a fact of our social order.” He spoke those words while the brave women of the Mercury 13, who had already proven their fitness and willingness to serve, sat and listened in the gallery. How must they have felt?

I wish I could say our social order is no longer defined by people like Glenn, who believed that it should automatically fall to women to stay home (or stay on Earth!). And we have made progress. But many fields are still assumed to be the realm of men. Gender inequities — lower pay, fewer opportunities, and greater responsibility when it comes to the care of children and aging parents, to name three — remain widespread.

Given what we’ve learned about the greater effectiveness of diverse teams, in space and on Earth, these disadvantages for women come at a great cost to our society. With all the global challenges we face, from poverty to climate change, we can’t afford to lose the perspectives and contributions of any segment of the world’s population.

Bottom line, I believe it’s incumbent upon all of us to stand up for what family and closeness mean to each of us, no matter what form our family takes. Of course, each of us has different circumstances and resources that may constrain us. But perhaps we also have more choices than we realize — ones that may make other people uncomfortable but nevertheless may be right for our families and our lives. Hopefully, by finding new ways we also expand the possibilities for others, so they can follow our path or, more importantly, make their own.

There’s no perfect division of labor or shift in attitudes that will erase the tension between pursuing a demanding career and being a parent. There will always be hard choices to make on one side or another. You can’t take a baby with you to space (at least, not yet!), so my career involved many difficult goodbyes — for me and for my loved ones. But we were always there for each other, even when I wasn’t on this planet. Jamey grew up knowing that his mom sometimes left, but he also knew that she always came back.

This story has been adapted from SHARING SPACE by Cady Coleman, to be published on July 2, 2024, by Penguin Life, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Catherine Coleman. Send comments to [email protected].

This file has been updated to include the name of the photographer on the International Space Station photo.