At a time of social unrest and a still-unfolding global pandemic, NASA has delivered a welcome bit of purely positive news. Yesterday's launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule went off flawlessly, lofting astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to the International Space Station. For the first time since 2011, the U.S. is launching humans into space on its own. And for the first time ever, astronauts have traveled into space aboard a privately developed craft.
These developments carry special import to astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman. She has flown into space three times and supervised more than 100 experiments aboard the space station. Even more to the point, she was the lead astronaut overseeing the first commercial supply ships to the station; before retiring from NASA in 2016, she continued to develop public-private partnerships for the agency's office of the chief technologist. She was an early advocate of expanding the role ...
