Our future lies with today's kids and tomorrow's space exploration.

It takes a couple of years just to get the background and knowledge that you need before you can go into detailed training for your mission.

I would like to be remembered as someone who was not afraid to do what she wanted to do, and as someone who took risks along the way in order to achieve her goals.

You know, I go around the country a lot.

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.

That's something that is almost part of being human and I'm certain that will continue.

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