I felt very honored, and I knew that people would be watching very closely, and I felt it was very, very important that I do a good job.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

For a long time, society put obstacles in the way of women who wanted to enter the sciences.

I love the John Glenn model... I may call NASA in 25 years or so, and see if they'd like to send me to Mars.

It was hard to become an astronaut. Not anywhere near as much physical training as people imagine, but a lot of mental training, a lot of learning. You have to learn everything there is to know about the Space Shuttle and everything you are going to be doing, and everything you need to know if something goes wrong, and then once you have learned it all, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice until everything is second nature, so it's a very, very difficult training, and it takes years.

Then during the mission itself, I used the space shuttle's robot arm to release a satellite into orbit.

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.