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.

The experience of being in space didn't change my perspective of myself or of the planet or of life. I had no spiritual experience.

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

The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it.

Anything from making a mistake on an experiment that would ruin some scientist on earth's experiment - career, potentially - to doing something wrong with the satellite that a country was depending on for its communications, to making some mistake that could actually cost you and the crew either a mission or your lives. So there is a lot of pressure that's put on every astronaut to just make sure that he or she understands exactly what to do, exactly when to do it, and is trained and prepared to carry it out.

The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.