Peggy Whitson

I came from Iowa, south central Iowa. It was a very rural area. I saw a lot more hogs growing up than I saw people.

I know the first female astronauts selected were definitely an inspiration to me, and so maybe I will be a role model.

Even if my job for the day is cleaning the vents or fixing the toilet, it still feels good to be a part of the space program and advancing exploration.

You see billions and billions of stars and recognize that you know some of those have planets, too, and maybe there's life out there, and this is just one of billions of galaxies... and so it gives you this huge perspective of how far we potentially have to go for real exploration.

My desire to contribute to the spaceflight team as we move forward in our exploration of space has only increased over the years.

I honestly do think that it is critical that we are continuously breaking records, because that represents us moving forward in exploration.

Breaking records has never been my goal. I think it's important that we're continually pushing our limits and showing that we can extend beyond what we have done before.

We want people to continue learning new things about what space does to the human body. It's important for us to understand that and make sure when we get ready to fly to Mars that we are ready for what we're going to be exposed to.

There is a potential to be a big explosion of what spaceflight is gonna mean to just an everyday person in the near future. I think it's very hopeful for our young people: all the exciting things that they could be doing in the future relative to space and space exploration.

Here, in low earth orbit, we're going around the earth, so we can actually use an Internet protocol phone because we have the appropriate satellites that can get those bandwidths.

Hopefully, we will get more and more people interested in doing research in space. I think eventually it's also going to be a great commercial market.

Viewing the earth from above gives you this sense of how special the planet is that we live on.