The view of Earth is spectacular.

Yes, I did feel a special responsibility to be the first American woman in space.

I didn't really decide that I wanted to be an astronaut for sure until the end of college.

I love the John Glenn model... I may call NASA in 25 years or so, and see if they'd like to send me to Mars.

There's a huge amount of pressure on every astronaut, because when you get right down to it, the experiments that are conducted on a space flight, or the satellites that are carried up, the work that's to be done, is important and expensive work, and you are up there for a week or two on a Space Shuttle flight. The country has invested a lot of money in you and your training, and the Space Shuttle and everything that's in it, and you have to do things correctly. You can't make a mistake during that week or two that you're in space.

When the space shuttle's engines cut off, and you're finally in space, in orbit, weightless... I remember unstrapping from my seat, floating over to the window, and that's when I got my first view of Earth. Just a spectacular view, and a chance to see our planet as a planet.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.