[2] During her early career, Cardman supported NASA research in British Columbia, Idaho, and Hawaii, developing operational architectures for planetary EVA.

At the time of her selection in June 2017, Cardman was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and Doctoral Candidate in Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, studying geobiology and novel redox couples in Earth's subsurface.

[4][5] Prior to her astronaut candidacy, Cardman worked in science and operations for the NASA Pavilion Lake Research Project (2008–2015) and BASALT (2016–2017).

In June 2017, she was selected as a member of NASA Astronaut Group 22 and began her two-year training at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

[9] On September 28, 2024, she co-hosted NASA's coverage of the Crew-9 launch, along with NASA communicator Derrol Nail and a brief appearance by Wilson, commenting at length during the nearly five-hour broadcast on the experience that her fellow crew members, Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, were going through as they successfully launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.