We leave as we came, and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.

Am I willing to go to Mars? Yes, but I'm not willing to spend nine months getting there, then wait 18 more months until the planets align to come home.

The countdown reached ten seconds and I could almost hear an invisible crescendo of stirring background music. 'Anchors aweigh!' Five, four, three, two, one... and we had ignition!

If you begin to think you're something you're not, you're looking in the wrong mirror.

Some of the most exciting space education in the country is not coming out of Washington or New York or California or even Texas. It's coming from a place in Kansas called the Cosmosphere.

Some astronauts describe the routine flushing of urine into space, where the freezing temperatures turn the droplets into a cloud of bright, drifting crystals, as being among the most amazing sights they saw on an entire voyage.

The mass gross absence of sound in space is more than just silence.