I am frequently asked whether astronauts could take personal items with them on their Shuttle flights.  Yes – within the rules.  The rules were created after the Apollo 15 crew took a stack of envelopes to the moon and postal stamped them there, intending to sell them after the flight.   Afterwards NASA made that strictly against the rules.  No astronaut could personally profit from the sale of items flown in space, but that wasn’t to say...

It was August.  It was hot.  I was sweating when I took the proverbial “hot seat” on August 28, 1977 – almost exactly 42 years ago. Earlier that year, I had learned that – at last! – NASA had opened the applications for the Astronaut Corps to women.  I’d requested, received and filled out an application.  Unexpectedly, I was invited to the Johnson Space Center near Houston to learn about the job and to be interviewed by the Astronaut Selection...

The most challenging thing I had to do after I became an astronaut was to become SCUBA qualified.  Why would astronauts need to do that?  If I was ever tasked with doing a spacewalk (called an EVA, or Extravehicular Activity), I’d have to train for it in the huge water tank at the Johnson Space Center.  The spacesuits used were specially made for practicing tasks in the water and were extremely heavy – too heavy and bulky to swim to the...

The Russians were coming!  It was 1957, and their Sputnik satellite was orbiting the Earth.  Would they attack us from space?  We were scared. The Space Race…it was on. Could I ever be a part of it? In April 1961, the Russian Yuri Gagarin orbited above us.  In May of that year, President John Kennedy set the audacious goal for the United States to land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth by the end of the decade – which most of us...

When NASA first selected humans to go into space at the beginning of the 1960s, the men’s wives quickly organized themselves into the Astronaut Wives Club to support the new space men.  Books and movies showcased those brave women.  Most had been in military wives’ groups.  They weathered absence and work schedules…even deaths.  Most had strong marriages, but a few didn’t last.  (I wondered if there was an Ex-Wives Club…) Growing up, I...