My mom studied biology and my dad studied chemistry and some physics and he is a physician, but he had a very strong interest in astronomy and astrophysics and exploration in general.

To do things that are as complicated and challenging as spaceflight, you have to have all disciplines represented to get the job done.

So here in space, obviously, in microgravity, we have to use our hands to get ourselves around, to float around the modules, because our feet, we don't necessarily walk around, we just grab hand holds and move ourselves around, which means that we need our hands free to do just that.

To see the Earth below you when we could take a break... to appreciate the environment around us was very special.

Fiction leaves us so much work to do, allows the individual so much input; you have to see, you have to hear, you have to taste the madeleine, and while you are seemingly passive in your chair, you have to travel.

I need to travel, of course, with my laptop, so I can do my business on the road.

I was blessed, because I come from a family where they knock you down before you float away. I have a lot of brothers who just make sure we have our feet on the ground, and my mom is a rock star. She is an amazing mother.

I always try and be as positive as I can and give people the benefit of the doubt because, in my own experience - seeing myself fall so hard so many times in my life and do so many things where I lost my way so many times - and then people didn't give up on me, like my husband and my family.