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.

Science, for hundreds of years, has spanned the differences between cultures and between countries.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There was a moth in there, and it still had its wings crumpled up, and it was just starting to pump its wings up. Life continues in lots of places, and life is a magical thing.