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

After the Challenger accident, NASA put in a lot of time to improve the safety of the space shuttle to fix the things that had gone wrong.

Once you are assigned to a flight, the whole crew is assigned at the same time, and then that crew trains together for a whole year to prepare for that flight.

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

I never went into physics or the astronaut corps to become a role model. But after my first flight, it became clear to me that I was one. And I began to understand the importance of that to people. Young girls need to see role models in whatever careers they may choose, just so they can picture themselves doing those jobs someday. You can't be what you can't see.

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

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