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

Different astronauts sleep in different ways.

Anything from making a mistake on an experiment that would ruin some scientist on earth's experiment - career, potentially - to doing something wrong with the satellite that a country was depending on for its communications, to making some mistake that could actually cost you and the crew either a mission or your lives. So there is a lot of pressure that's put on every astronaut to just make sure that he or she understands exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, and is trained and prepared to carry it out.

The best advice I can give anybody is to try to understand who you are and what you want to do, and don't be afraid to go down that road and do whatever it takes and work as hard as you have to work to achieve that.

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry - astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency.

If they asked me if I wanted to go into space tomorrow, I'd do it in a heartbeat. On the other hand, if they asked me if I wanted to go into training for three years and then go into space again, I'd probably say no.