Sharing Space: An Astronaut's Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change

One of America’s few female astronauts reveals the wisdom that helped her overcome the barriers of others’ expectations—and learn to work on a team both in close quarters and remotely In 2010, the day after her fiftieth birthday—and despite having faced feedback for years that she was not astronaut material—Cady Coleman boarded a rocket and blasted off into space for her third NASA mission, the only woman on her six-person crew. She may have been an “unexpected” astronaut, but her determination and her experiences give her a unique perspective on life here on Earth. In Sharing Space, Cady shares counterintuitive insights integral to her success, such as how to leverage insecurities to beat expectations, how to know when to adapt and when to press for change, and how to be the glue that holds a disparate team together. Illustrated with stories from her life and training, from meteorite hunting in Antarctica to the two weeks she spent living in an underwater habitat to the magic of spending six months living and working in zero gravity, this book will inspire anyone eager to escape a box in which they have been (unfairly) placed or develop the confidence to succeed, even when they’re not an obvious “fit.”