It's such a long mission and we get to spend so much time in space... we're doing such exciting research. And I don't want to overemphasize the life science research, but as a physician the life science research that we're doing is extremely exciting.

Certainly my parents were a huge influence. They always expected the most out of all of us. And expected us to do our very best. I'm thankful to them for allowing me to do what I wanted to do.

The microgravity or the very, very low amount of gravity that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings.

Things are going very smoothly. As expected, there are some minor glitches, and the eight minutes that it took us to get to orbit, we trained months and months for, and didn't have to use any of that preparation, other than being aware and ready.

Some things are only capable of being done in space. Examples of that are looking at our Earth from that far away, and understanding the entire processes of storms and weather patterns, and oceans, and coastlines.

Gravity is one variable in a lot of scientific processes. If you can remove gravity or minimize its effect, then you can understand the other processes that are going on.

If you're trying to get someone who's sick with a fever off of a submarine and it's cold and raining outside, the only way in and out of a submarine, generally, is through a fairly narrow hatch.