Other than motherhood, the eight years that I spent at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, I have incredibly fond memories of. It's a beautiful place, with four seasons up in Wisconsin. And really wonderful people.

Life continues in lots of places, and life is a magical thing.

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.

I've always enjoyed traveling and having experience with different cultures and different people. But it's also a wonderful thing to be able to benefit and enable research, not only in our country but around the world.

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.

I can't think of anything specific growing up that pointed me toward NASA at all. I was interested in the Moon landings just about the same as everyone else of my generation. But I never really thought about being an astronaut or working in space myself.

Gravity pulls our bodily fluids down, like water in a glass goes to the bottom part of a glass. In space, the water doesn't stay in the bottom of the glass. It distributes itself evenly over time throughout the entire volume of the glass.