There's a lot of interest from the medical community on how things develop in microgravity, and the hope, later, that is expected to apply to what the changes are in humans as well.

I did grow up with a really big interest in math and science; I liked it.

I'll be the person using the shuttle robotic arm.

We didn't use the shuttle robot arm before, so this has been a training flow to get ready for that.

In the Astronaut Office we're never totally out of training, we always keep our hand in it. But after five years, things have changed and so it's been good to get back into the flow and relearn a lot of things.

I grew up watching a lot of the coverage of the early U.S. space program, all the way back starting with Mercury and then through Gemini and Apollo and of course going to the moon as the main part of the Apollo program.

It's very important to know that we packed it right because it is a safety issue for coming home.