Biography

Colonel in the United States Air Force, a NASA astronaut and a veteran of two Space Shuttle missions. She was selected by NASA in 1992 to become a mission specialist astronaut. Coleman logged over 500 hours in space.

In 1979-1980 she was an exchange student at Røyken upper secondary school in Norway. She received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, as a member of the US Air Force ROTC. She was a member of the intercollegiate crew team and was a resident of Baker House.

Coleman joined the Air Force as a second lieutenant while studying for a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts. In 1988 she entered active duty at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base as a research chemist. During her work she also participated at the analysis of the Long Duration Exposure Facility (LDEF) experiment launched with STS-41-C and retrieved with STS-32. In 1991 she received her doctorate in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts.

In 1995, she was a member of the (Space Transport System) STS-73 crew on the scientific mission USML-1 with experiments including biotechnology, combustion science and the physics of fluids. During the flight, she reported to Houston Mission Control that she had spotted an unidentified flying object. In completing her first space flight, Coleman orbited the Earth 256 times and traveled over 6 million miles. STS-93 was Coleman's second space flight in 1999. She was mission specialist in charge of placing the Chandra X-ray Observatory in orbit using the shuttle's robotic arm.

Coleman went on to serve as Chief of robotic arm operations and training for all Space Shuttle and International Space Station missions. During mission STS-116, when a station solar panel array became stuck in mid-retraction, Coleman led the team responsible for devising its recovery. The solution involved using the station's robotic arm to deploy spacewalking astronauts who manually straightened affected elements of the array.