The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.

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

If we want scientists and engineers in the future, we should be cultivating the girls as much as the boys.

It was a real honor for me to get to be the first woman astronaut. I think it's really important that young girls that are growing up today can see that women can be astronauts too. There have actually been a lot of women, who are astronauts, that that's a career that's open to them.

You know, I go around the country a lot.

The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.

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