Personal
Coleman is married to glass artist Josh Simpson who lives in Massachusetts. They have one son. She is also part of the band Bandella, which also includes fellow NASA astronaut Steven Robinson, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, and Micki Pettit (astronaut Don Pettit's wife). Coleman is a flute player and has taken several flutes with her to the ISS, including a pennywhistle from Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains, an old Irish flute from Matt Molloy of The Chieftains, and a flute from Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. On February 15, 2011, she played one of the instruments live from orbit on National Public Radio. On April 12, 2011, she played live through video link for the audience of Jethro Tull's show in Russia in honour of the 50th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight. She played the duet from orbit while Anderson played on the ground in Russia. On May 13 of that year, Coleman delivered a taped commencement address to the class of 2011 at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
As many other astronauts, also Coleman holds an amateur radio license (callsign: KC5ZTH).
Read more about this topic: Catherine Coleman
Famous quotes containing the word personal:
“Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance! What hymning of cancerous vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of a strange language and artificial phrase! Yet we keep a repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when presented in our personal experience.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Glamour cannot exist without personal social envy being a common and widespread emotion.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for powers sake ... but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy. It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by ones own rules.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)