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

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.

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.

Because I was a tennis player, Billie Jean King was a hero of mine.

I was always very interested in science, and I knew that for me, science was a better long-term career than tennis.

It's easy to sleep floating around - it's very comfortable. But you have to be careful that you don't float into somebody or something!

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.