For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.

NASA has to approve whatever we wear, so there are clothes to choose from, like space shorts - we wear those a lot - and NASA T-shirts.

The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire.

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

So most astronauts are astronauts for a couple of years before they are assigned to a flight.

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.

My parents must have done a great job. Anytime I wanted to pursue something that they weren't familiar with, that was not part of their lifestyle, they let me go ahead and do it.