I can't remember a single time [my parents] ever told me not to do something I wanted to do.

I never went into physics or the astronaut corps to become a role model. But after my first flight, it became clear to me that I was one. And I began to understand the importance of that to people. Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can't be what you can't see.

We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form.

The view of Earth is spectacular.

My background is in physics, so I was the mission specialist, who is sort of like the flight engineer on an airplane.

Astronauts will remain the explorers, the pioneers-the first to go back to moon and on to Mars. But I think it's really important to make space space available to as many people as we can. It's going to be a while before we can launch people for less than $20 million a ticket. But that day is coming.

Well, we spend an awful lot of our time working and doing experiments. It's very busy up on the shuttle.