Shannon Walker

I studied physics as an undergraduate, and after I graduated from Rice University, I was actually hired at the Johnson Space Center as a flight controller.

Houston is where I grew up and luckily I didn't have to go far to pursue my dream of becoming an astronaut.

When I was growing up, I used to have dreams of going to fly. Being in space reminds me of that.

To feel the power of the engines is by far the most exciting thing. You feel this great force pushing you off the earth. Eight-and-a-half minutes later, you're in outer space.

Like a lot of kids, I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. With me, it stuck more than most kids. Ever since I was little, I wanted to do it.

It's a little surprising to me that I'm the first Houstonian to be an astronaut.

The language is the hardest thing. My technical Russian is much better than my conversational Russian, and it has to be good enough to explain problems to them in their technical control center.

So much of our training focuses so much on the systems and how to operate the station, and not just the day-to-day life in terms of slowing down and enjoying the experience.

It's unfortunate, but I know it's the right thing to do to end the shuttle program. If we want to do other things, we need a different spacecraft.

Most of my family and friends are very familiar with the human space flight program and with the excitement of becoming an astronaut.

During and after college, I did a lot of biking and bike touring.

I wanted to become an astronaut because I believe that the exploration of space by humans is extremely important.

We have stars, planets and galaxies in space. There's lots of nothingness out there, but it's really not. There's gas, dust and other bits of matter floating around emptier' areas of the universe, but you can't see it very easily.

Learning how to and being expected to know how to fly an international partner vehicle is quite something, especially having to do it all in Russian.

At a young age, I became interested in space and science after watching the U.S. land on the moon for the first time.

I would love to fly to the Moon or Mars.

Well, eating is very similar to eating on Earth. Of course, there is no gravity, so your food does float around. So you have to be a little bit more careful that it doesn't go flying off your fork or spoon.

My sleeping bag is affixed to a wall and I climb inside and sort of float around in the sleeping bag at night while I'm sleeping.

I do remember the space program from my earliest memories. It's always been with me and something I wanted to be a part of.

When I was in high school we had the first shuttle launch, and it reinvigorated my enthusiasm for the space program. I was in awe of the space shuttle as such a tremendous machine taking people into space. It seemed like such a wonderful thing that I wanted to be a part of.

It is incredibly exciting to be able to actually go and live on the space station after having worked so long on seeing the hardware built, getting it launched and maintaining it.

To be able to watch our colleagues, our friends come home safely is always an emotional event.

One thing I really like about flying is that it is an activity that my mother and I can do together.

There is something quite special about getting into a plane with my mother and going somewhere.

If you work hard, the things to which you aspire can happen.

Flying gives me a tremendous sense of freedom and I hope that anyone who wishes to learn has the opportunity to do so.

Having the opportunity to look out this wonderful 360-degree-view, down at the Earth - and at the rest of the universe - is pretty special.

I don't really have a lot of anxieties.

The Soyuz is probably only slightly smaller than the Dragon.

When your flying in a jet aircraft, everything goes much faster.

Sunsets are absolutely amazing from the Space Station.

Why did I want to be an astronaut? That's not an easy question to answer because I know a lot of kids want to be astronauts when they grow up but it stuck with me and I think just maybe growing up in Houston and always having the astronauts and the Johnson Space Center in my backyard, I was always aware of the space program.

Houston's a very big town. It's changed a lot over my lifetime, it's quite a bit bigger now than it was when I was growing up, but it's a fantastic city. I know a lot of people perhaps don't give it the credit it's due but it's a wonderful city that's got absolutely fantastic restaurants.

Well, I was quite young when we first walked on the moon; I had just turned four, but I did watch it on TV. I think that just set the seed right then that that would be a really interesting thing to do.

Growing up in Houston I did go through the public school system. I went to Parker Elementary, Johnston Junior High and Westbury Senior High.

Sometimes you can have too much information. You keep gathering information and never bother to find out what the real answer is.

I liked learning things. I liked solving problems and doing my homework. I realize a lot of kids don't like that, but I always enjoyed going to school.

It's fascinating to learn math and science and engineering.

Yeah, I think everybody goes through periods, especially in college, where the homework is really piling up and then you have several more weeks of school left and you think that you'll never be able to get through all the homework problems that you have to do or read all the books or write all the papers that you have to write.

All astronauts have degrees in science, engineering, or medicine, but other than that, there's no one path to NASA. The one thing everyone has in common is we've all exceled in our chosen field.

My degrees are in physics and space physics, and I did well enough in university that I actually started working at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as a robotics flight controller right after college.

Being in space is amazing - it's the reason we all become astronauts - but you also have to love what you're doing on the ground, since that's how you'll spend most of your time.

Mental fitness is obviously important to being an astronaut, but so it physical fitness. For example, space walks are extremely physically demanding. We train for them in a giant swimming pool and we wear this suit that weighs about 300 pounds.

To be honest, I haven't really put much thought into the fact that I am the first woman on a commercial vehicle. I expect to be the first of many, and look forward to the day that we don't have to note such events.

In some ways, it's the start of all those science-fiction movies that we watched as kids coming to fruition where you've got entities living and working out in space and off the planet. Just to be at the forefront of that is enormously exciting.

I enjoy traveling and seeing new places - especially places where I can go hiking.

The reason that we don't have happy hours up here is because you never know when something might actually go sideways, and so we always have to be prepared in a worst, worst case scenario to jump on our spacecraft and go home. So, we have to keep it pretty straight and narrow while we're up here.

We've got pictures from the Space Station going back 20 years. We can see the glaciers receding in the photography that we do. We can see the effects of lakes drying up and other things that are happening around the planet.

I think one of the ways that we can fight against climate change is keep showing what we're doing to the planet, and we've got a unique vantage point up here to see what is happening to our earth below us, and to give people a sense of how tiny our atmosphere is and how much we need to protect it.

NASA needs to decide, along with Congress, what our destination is going to be, whether it's going to be the moon, an asteroid or on to Mars. And we're building a heavy-lift vehicle to get us there and building the capsules that's going to be needed to carry the crew.