Cady Coleman is a former NASA Astronaut and a retired US Air Force Colonel with more than 180 days in space, accumulated during two space shuttle missions and a six-month expedition to the International Space Station (ISS) as the Lead Robotics and Lead Science officer. Cady served in a variety of roles within the Astronaut Office, including Chief of Robotics, and lead astronaut for the integration of supply ships from NASA’s commercial partners. Before retiring from NASA, she led open-innovation and public-private partnership efforts for NASA’s Chief Technologist.
Cady’s story is one of resilience and inspiration – In 2010, Cady Coleman boarded a rocket and blasted off into space for her third NASA mission, a six-month expedition to the International Space Station where she was the only woman on her six-person crew. After years spent overcoming obstacles in competitive, high-performance environments, including grappling with her own doubts and training in a spacesuit that was too big, Coleman became a success story in a role that wasn’t built with her in mind—an astronaut who is also a mother, Air Force colonel, scientist, and leader. Her determination and amazing experiences give her a unique perspective on how to set yourself up for success, in space and here on Earth. In her new book, Sharing Space, Cady shares counterintuitive insights integral to her success, such as how to know when to adapt and when to press for change instead, how to leverage insecurities to beat expectations, and how to be the glue that holds a disparate team together, shaping it to thrive.
In this interview I speak to Cady Coleman, a former NASA Astronaut & Retired US Air Force Colonel with more than 180 days in space including two shuttle missions and a six-month expedition to the International Space Station. In our conversation, we discuss the learnings we can take for our own lives from her incredible journey in one of the most competitive, and high-performance careers possible.
Q: How do we overcome insecurity? How can we use insecurity to our advantage?
[Cady Coleman]: I’m glad that we are discussing insecurity. First, it’s crucial for us as humans to dispel the myth that people who excel and make a difference always know exactly which path to take. In reality they don’t always have the right answers, and life is far more complicated than that. Everyone has important skills and likely unique skills, but they may not always be as confident in those skills as they should be.
The second point is that today’s most important challenges are met by teams of people, as opposed to a single superhero. We need to challenge the notion that if you don’t feel like a superhero, then you must not be the right person for the job. That’s why I felt it was important to share that I wish I were more confident in my abilities. I believe I should be, but I’m just not all the time.
If you’re in a situation where you’re stepping into a role where you are unexpected, people might look at you and wonder why you’re there, rather than being excited to see what you can bring to the table. Being underestimated in that way often brings out the best in me. For me, it’s not just about overcoming insecurity but leveraging it as a catalyst to ensure that I bring everything I have to the mission and that I muster the courage to show people who I really am.
Q: How do you build mental and physical resilience?
[Cady Coleman]: Physical resilience is often rooted in practice and preparation. You need to ensure you’re ready for what will be demanded of you. Mental resilience is supported by those things as well, but it also comes from knowing, deep down, that you’re supposed to be where you are. Confidence in your purpose is crucial. Perspective matters here. When you step back and look at the big picture, it reminds you of the broader purpose of your work, and the importance of taking each step, despite any setbacks or disappointments. By focusing on the next step, and then the one after that, while keeping the big picture in mind, you can effectively accomplish the mission.
Q: How important is the concept of mission in our lives?
[Cady Coleman]: I believe that a mission can be something grand, but it doesn’t have to be. Many people say, “I’m just busy living my life, and I don’t have time for some grand mission.” But I think a mission is present for almost everyone if they take the time to look for it. I think that if you care about something, then you have a mission. Knowing that, and that your specific set of skills and experience brings something special to that mission, are key.
It’s all about how we define it. When you wake up in the morning, there are things you care about. You care about being ready for your day—why? What’s important to you about what you want to accomplish? Is it family-related, job-related, or tied to a passion you have? All of these are missions, in my view.
I tend to divide my life into different missions. So for me there’s the family mission and the work mission, and I have to figure out how to switch gears between them. For example, my family mission is to ensure our sons are safe, learning, and on a path where they can thrive. And the work mission can range from being assigned to a space flight, to succeeding in any of the jobs that astronauts are assigned between flights. That means things like advising on how to build the next spacesuits or developing new safety procedures.
This can extend to community involvement as well. For example, being the voice that asks, “Are we the first community to bring solar and wind power here? What can we learn from other places?” Instead of just debating whether something is right or wrong, it’s about recognizing that it’s new for all of us and that we can learn together and make decisions collectively. That’s a brave thing to do in a community. Chances are, you know someone—a parent, perhaps—who speaks up in a meeting or volunteers to take on a role at school. I believe those are missions as well.
I think it’s important to recognize that self-care is part of all of our missions, too, so that we can bring our best to any mission we’re a part of.
Q: How do you handle the transition from a major achievement, back to civilian life?
[Cady Coleman]: From what I understand from astronaut spouses, the transition between missions is their least favorite part of spaceflight. It’s a difficult period. It requires us to take a big step back and reflect on our accomplishments. For instance, I, along with my crew, successfully completed STS-93, which deployed a telescope originally expected to last five years. It’s now been functioning for 25 years and has provided us with nearly everything we know about black holes. Being part of that mission, along with a whole team of astrophysicists and support staff, was significant. The anniversaries of that mission have been helpful reminders of its importance.
But after STS-93 in 1999, I didn’t return to space until the end of 2010, so it was a 10-year gap without a specific space mission. But it didn’t feel that way because I kept the larger purpose in mind—exploration, especially human exploration. All astronauts have jobs between flights, no matter how long or short the gap is. These jobs range from assisting the center director to understanding management processes, or being involved in designing crew quarters for the third person to live on the space station when only two cabins existed. I also worked on various aspects of the space station, like acoustics and supply ships. Now, when you see ships docking at the space station, those protocols were developed with uncrewed ships, something I was involved in. Understanding the bigger mission, which takes years, is really important to me.
STS-93, the mission where we launched the Chandra telescope, was conceived 25 years before we launched it. Someone had that vision long before it became a reality. This long-term perspective is essential.
Let me give you an example that brings many things together. I was assigned to work on projects with the Russians for the space station, which we were building together. Initially, the habitable part of the station was built by the Russians, and they only had two cabins, but we needed a third. This led to an important discussion. The Russians argued that two cabins would suffice, insisting it was impossible to create a third. I told them, “My mom is visiting from Ohio today. If you can look her in the eye and tell her it’s impossible to build a place for me to stay on the space station during my mission, then we’re done here. If not, we have more to discuss.” They suggested my mom come to dinner instead, and we ended up going to Home Depot together. We walked around the store, discussing what we’d need to build our cabin, making it a more concrete conversation. It was a great example of how language, culture, and teamwork come together in these kinds of projects – and how each of these smaller steps come together to get us ready for the next big mission.
Adopting “new” missions like these every time I returned from a space mission and knowing they were part of a larger collective goal of exploration went a long way to easing those transitions. I’m not saying the transitions didn’t have their challenges – but new missions made them significantly easier.
Q: One of the most profound learnings from your book was the story of the elimination of the different sizes of space suit, what was so important about this moment?
[Cady Coleman]: This is the spacesuit we wear for spacewalks, not the one used for launching. It’s not comfortable—it’s your protection in space, essentially a spaceship in the shape of a human. It provides your air, water, communication—everything. Because of that, it’s big, awkward, and heavy, weighing over 130 kilos, or about 300 pounds. Working in that suit was one of the hardest things I ever had to figure out.
Then, a logistical decision was made for the space station: we wouldn’t bring all sizes of suits. No small suits would be available because the logistics couldn’t support it. That affected more than 30% of the women astronauts. I’ll never forget when the chief of the Astronaut Office said, “We’ve looked ahead at the manifest for building and living on the space station, and we have all the spacewalkers we need.”
Think about how that feels when you’re told that for this essential skill that is part of the astronaut job, you’re not needed. It’s as if they were saying, “You don’t bring anything essential and we won’t miss you.” My response to this was influenced by knowing it was coming. Some guys had warned me that the small suit was going away and that I needed to qualify in a medium. One of them told me, “I’ve watched you, and I think you have the mindset of a spacewalker. I think you’re strong enough, clever enough—you can do this.”
That encouragement pushed me to show up to spacewalking meetings I wasn’t initially invited to. It wasn’t that people didn’t want me there; it just hadn’t occurred to them that I belonged in the same suit. But I knew that if I wanted to work and live on the space station long-term—not just go up on the shuttle and come home—I needed to make that suit work. And I did, with a lot of help. I’m very proud of qualifying, and especially proud that some of the techniques that I developed to help me function in a suit that was way too big, turned out to be useful to other people too. It would have been perfect to also do a spacewalk on the space station, but nothing required a repair outside the station while we were up there. But I have to confess we did sometimes hope for something not dangerous, but expensive, to break so we could go out and fix it.
I invite people to think about how this situation might play out in their own world, where someone has to work with equipment that doesn’t fit them, making their job difficult. Consider any profession that uses safety equipment—it’s often not designed for someone who is 5’4″ with smaller hands. This isn’t just about women; it’s about people in general. We need to ensure that everyone on our teams has the equipment they need to function as full-fledged team members.
There’s a bright side to this: they’re building new spacesuits for the Artemis program for the return to the moon. More importantly, the newer classes of astronauts are banding together to support and help each other with spacewalk training. Their motto: If all of us don’t succeed and qualify in the spacesuit, then we haven’t succeeded as astronauts. There’s a collective mission to ensure everyone is supported, which is an important way of saying, “Jones is a crucial part of our team, so let’s make sure she can function at her best in every aspect of our job,” rather than accepting that she’ll never be able to take part in certain missions because she doesn’t have a spacesuit that fits her.
During my time at NASA if you didn’t fit in a spacesuit or qualify in it, you couldn’t go to the space station. That was because our spacecrafts only fit three people and you needed to have two spacewalkers and a backup. Now that we have a fourth seat on the SpaceX and soon on the Boeing as well, we’re seeing opportunities for those who have been left behind because they couldn’t fit in the suits. A fact worth noting: If I hadn’t qualified in the medium suit, I would have had to wait 11 years for my space station mission.
These equipment challenges aren’t about “poor me.” They’re about considering whose skills and solutions we might be missing because we don’t fully embrace who they are and ensure they have what they need—whether it’s equipment, ideas, encouragement, or team organization—so that everyone can function effectively.
Q: Why is it important to celebrate the legwork, not just the liftoff?
[Cady Coleman]: STS-93, the mission where we launched the Chandra telescope, is a great example of why legwork is so important to celebrate. The telescope was conceived 25 years before we launched it. Someone had that vision long before it became a reality. This long-term perspective is essential, and so are the thousands of people it took to send that telescope to space.
Think about the millions of small tasks that had to be accomplished perfectly before deployment. It was the largest and heaviest object ever to be launched into space. People had to figure out how far out in the universe Chandra should orbit in order to image black holes and still be able to send the data back to earth. So many things had to be envisioned, designed and built to withstand the forces of launching as well as the hostile environment of deep space. Brand new mirrors shaped like nested funnels …. new imaging systems… novel propulsion systems, and (close to my heart) new lightweight materials that would make all of these things possible.
And the result: A new generation that thinks it is normal to see new images of black holes.
Q: How do you stay motivated over such long periods?
[Cady Coleman]: It’s important to have reminders of what you’ve accomplished as a team. Images, songs, stories are powerful ways to keep the accomplishments in sight. I lived on the space station about 10 years after it was built, and now the space station is just turning 24. That’s a long time to stay focused. I’m proud of the part that our crew played in capturing an iconic image that represents the hard work that 17 nations have done together.
When we were leaving the space station, the space shuttle was only 2 flights away from being retired. People were beginning to realize that we had never actually captured a photograph of the space station with the shuttle attached.
Before we left, our crew suggested that we fly around the Earth alongside the space station and photograph it to capture the shuttle and the space station together. Initially, we were told it was too complicated to get the shot. However, our crew was passionate about photography, so we prepared just in case. It’s a good thing we did, because a couple of days before the mission, they started reconsidering and asked about lenses and setups. We were ready with ideas.
It was amazing to have that view when we undocked in our small Russian spacecraft, and the photography plan went flawlessly. That image is now used everywhere, serving as a reminder of the incredibly challenging endeavor we accomplished together: building a space station over many years and continuing to use it as a stepping stone for missions back to the moon and on to Mars.
Q: What did you learn from spending months in space?
[Cady Coleman]: Certainly I learned a ton about how much a crew can accomplish together when they focus on the mission. We were 6 people, from 3 countries, with very different personalities. But spending so much time up there together forced us to find creative ways to communicate and connect across those differences. One of those connections was simply the awe and wonder of the experience of living in space – a new frontier. The fact that we were weightless up there – it’s not just about floating around; if you want to get somewhere, you have to fly. It’s the most delightful, delicious, and amazing thing to figure out. Just a touch of a finger will push you across the whole space station.
Over time, you learn that if you push from a certain angle, you might end up cartwheeling around, so you figure out how to push yourself in a straight direction. Even if I took a single hair from my head, stretched it between my hands, and gently pushed against a handrail, I could push myself across the entire space station. It takes so little force to move. To me, this defies what seems impossible on Earth and reminds us of all the possibilities in life—far more than we’ve ever imagined.
I recently watched a video of Kayla Barron on the space station, and I saw her moving from one end of a module to the other. Each module is about the size of a school bus without seats, and there are about 10 of them, some positioned up and some down. The US lab is one of the bigger ones. I saw Kayla wanting to go from one end to the other, and she ran, using the handrails along each refrigerator-sized section of that bus-length module, gracefully running like a lion. I would never have thought to do that, and I didn’t think to do that while I was up there.
I love that there’s always more to discover, more ways to do things. That’s the optimism we need to solve so many of the interdisciplinary and difficult challenges we face here on Earth.
Q: Did your vantage point, seeing the earth from space, change you?
[Cady Coleman]: There’s a phrase often used to describe this shift in perspective called the overview effect. However, I’m not fond of using it because it implies that everyone has the same experience when they see a particular view, and I don’t believe it works that way. But it’s powerful – and it’s hard to “unexperience” it.
Before my first space mission, I talked to other astronauts about what it was like to be weightless and live in space, so I thought I knew what it would be like. But when I actually went, I felt an unexpected connection to the Earth. Looking down, I thought, “Everyone human alive is down there—— on Earth except the six of us up here on the space station. How can they not see they’re all part of one crew – the crew of Spaceship Earth?” If people could understand that, they could be truly connected and together, we could meet any challenge.
For me, it was a revelation that space is closer than we think and that home is much bigger than we imagine.
Q: How did you manage to disconnect from the window, and the view of the earth?
[Cady Coleman]: It’s hard, definitely hard. I want to do everything, so staying on schedule can be challenging. One way I managed this was by scheduling time to look out the window. I would pick a few places I wanted to see each day, often aligning them with targets chosen by the scientists—the geologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and others. If I was curious about their targets, I’d focus on those and take pictures for them, combining it with the busyness of the day.
There were a few days when I had to stay focused on practicing robotics because a Japanese Supply ship was launching up to the space station. I was the person responsible for capturing it with the robotic arm, so I limited myself to just four things: eating, sleeping, sticking to the schedule, and practicing robotics. I didn’t allow myself to look out the window, and I actually regret that decision now. Looking back, I wonder, how could I choose not to look out the window?
When I came home, I almost didn’t want to look out the window of a plane because it reminded me of what it felt like to see our earth from the space station —that wide perspective connected to the Earth.
Q: How do you build an effective team?
[Cady Coleman]: I think the biggest secret is to never stop paying attention to who your teammates are and what they bring to the table, especially those you don’t naturally connect with. It’s easy to feel a kinship with people who understand you, who get your ideas right away, and respond with enthusiasm. Those connections are straightforward. But even when the connection seems obvious, there are always things about them you don’t know.
The real challenge comes with the people who might annoy you or seem difficult to connect with. Whether it’s at home or work, if you focus on those annoyances, you’re missing the point. I’m not perfect at this, but I’ve learned from my experiences. On our crew, we were all very different from each other, and back home, it was almost a joke—people wondered what would happen with such a diverse group. Scott was quiet, I talked more than most of the others, Dimitri hadn’t worked much with women, and Paolo, being Italian, was not thrilled about the food. And at the same time, each of us brought immense skills to the table.
To build a team, you have to be brave enough to speak up about who you are, and you also have to be open and encouraging when others try to share who they are. It’s important to recognize when someone doesn’t know how to do something and step in to help. These qualities—often dismissed as “soft skills”—are, in my view, essential strengths. They’re crucial for pulling together all the pieces needed to solve problems, whether in a company, a community, or even your kid’s soccer team.
It’s vital that we understand the importance of these skills, nurture them in our colleagues, and encourage them in the next generation.
Q: Is asking the right question and showing curiosity critical to building teams too?
[Cady Coleman]: At some point in many meetings, there is an “elephant in the room” moment, where everyone sees an issue, but is afraid to bring it up, because the leader of the group seems to be ignoring it. Asking about it seems critical of the leadership. And less experienced people on the team might feel as if they can’t afford to ask. I’ve seen this even in the astronaut office. As I became one of the more senior members of the astronaut office, I sometimes found myself asking those “elephant” questions, especially ones that newer astronauts seemed hesitant to ask. I like to bring those questions out because I believe that focusing on the issue itself gives the leadership permission to acknowledge the issues, and then recruit the group to solve them. It gives those leaders credit for being human.
As an example, during one of our weekly Astronaut Office meetings, our Chief Astronaut announced that NASA HQ planned to increase the number of year-long missions in order to collect valuable medical data, and that we needed to comply with those requests, even though he knew not everyone wanted to stay that long in space. He said that these missions would become the norm, despite the concerns.
I responded by saying, “I can accept that if our exploration strategy needs that data, then we need to comply. But a few years ago, we did a study on the optimal length of a space mission——and the conclusion was that somewhere between three and six months was optimal, not a year. So clearly, the study must have identified some disadvantages to these longer missions. What’s the plan to mitigate those risks?”
He looked at me and said, “Maybe you could bring those studies to me, Coleman, because I don’t recall seeing them. And I’m sure those are things we need to understand better.” It was a tough question for me to ask, but an important demonstration that even difficult questions needed to be asked. I thought he handled it well.