Quotes from Shannon Walker

Once you're in space, you don't get visitors very often.

NASA works very well with different election organizations because we're all voting from different counties.

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.

Sunsets are absolutely amazing from the Space Station.

I was having a hard time getting interest from future employers because of my physics background. It seemed all anyone wanted was engineers.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

I have not ever seen an extraterrestrial creature. That would be very cool if I did.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

The important thing is to try to stay connected with friends and family.

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.

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.

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.