So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth.

It's well known that many girls have a tendency to dumb down when they're in middle school.

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

On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.

The view of earth is absolutely spectacular, and the feeling of looking back and seeing your planet as a planet is just an amazing feeling. It's a totally different perspective, and it makes you appreciate, actually, how fragile our existence is.

Eventually private enterprise will be able to send people into orbit, but I suspect initially it's going to have to be with NASA's help. Whether it's going to be a consortium or one entity remains to be seen. I could be wrong. I could be one of the old fogies! Rocket science is tough, and rockets have a way of failing. It happens. A company has to be willing to bear the risk of its rocket failing. It's a very large capital investment.

There are lots of opportunities out there for women to work in these fields, ... Girls just need support, encouragement and mentoring to follow through with the sciences.