Helen Sharman Quotes

Every shuttle mission's been successful.

I slept just floating in the middle of the flight deck, the upper deck of the space shuttle.

The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad.

Finally my dream came true in that there was a possibility that I could travel to the International Space Station. I've gone through the medicals and the training and now I'm officially, by the Russian Space Federation, a cosmonaut in training.

The basic thing you have to understand is everything that happens on that spaceship, from the time you crawl into that seat to the time it touches down, is controlled from the ground. There's no one thing that makes a good astronaut. I don't know any person with determination and will that can't go to space.

I have had the privilege to be a member of many high-performance teams at NASA, both on and off the planet.

The astronaut corps is a very small part of a very large team that enables human spaceflight.

The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.

I don't have to go into outer space to write about an astronaut.

In 2009 I went up on the space shuttle. I was in space for 16 days and docked at the space station for 11 days. The entire crew did five space walks, of which I was involved with three of them. When you're doing a space walk, you always have a buddy with you. It's a very dangerous environment when you're doing a space walk.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

For the last several years and culminating in six months in orbit next year, I've been training for my third space flight. This one is almost in a category completely different than the previous two, specifically to live in on the space station for six months, to command a space ship and to fly a new rocket ship.

And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.

He who commands an Apollo flight will not command a second one.

Because when we're in space, my job is primarily getting us there and getting us back.

Having walked on the Moon, I know something about what we need to explore, really explore, in space.

My job during the EVAs, the spacewalks, is to act as the inside coordinator. I remain on the aft flight deck of the shuttle, and I act in a manner to help the gentlemen outside, my fellow crewmates, who are performing the EVA tasks.

I fully expect that NASA will send me back to the moon as they treated Sen. Glenn, and if they don't do otherwise, why, then I'll have to do it myself.

The beauty of the space station, and of human spaceflight, is that it is now at a level of maturity where you can invite people on-board, which is what I worked so hard to do on social media and all the videos I made.

Go to the moon - that's my dream.

And the first flight of the tether satellite happened in '92, and I was the backup on that flight.

I wanted to get superimposed on a shuttle launch.

If you're going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What's the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.

We've learned a lot by building the International Space Station, the good, the bad. But, the fact is is that working together as a team, unity aboard that space station, we can accomplish great things.

Walking in space is absolutely the most exhilarating part of a mission. The view is just incredible.