I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders.
The Earth is a beautiful planet. The space station is a great vantage point to observe it and share our planet in pictures. It makes you more of an environmentalist.
Just like the bones and muscles, the heart is designed to work in one gravity here on Earth, so when you put the heart in space, it operates differently and changes shape.
There are few aspects of everyday life that aren't touched by the technologies developed for space travel.
It's a combination of science, maintenance, and general housekeeping. And then, occasionally, robotics activities or a spacewalk you might get to do.
There's a lot of work to do - not only the science but maintaining the facilities up here. When you go down from a crew of six to a crew of three, obviously you've lost half of your crew time available, so it does have an impact. But it's an impact we plan for.
There are parts of the Earth that are covered with pollution all the time. I saw weather that was unexpected. Storms bigger than we've seen in the past. This is a human effect. This is not a natural phenomenon.
We used to have a crew of three on board the space station and even at one time a crew of two people, so it's something we can adjust to.
When I look at the clouds over the Earth, and I know how high clouds are, I get a sense we are really, really far above those clouds. I wouldn't call it scary, but I am aware I am in space.
By going to Mars one day, we will make things better for us here on Earth.
The calluses on your feet in space will eventually fall off. So, the bottoms of your feet become very soft like newborn baby feet. But the top of my feet develop rough alligator skin because I use the top of my feet to get around here on space station when using foot rails.
We're fortunate to have football on the space station.
The earth is a beautiful planet.
When we do things that are really hard, we can achieve great things - and that has worked as a great model for me.
I don't think people have an appreciation for the work that it takes to pull these missions off, like humans living on the space station continuously for 15 years. It is a huge army of hard-working people to make it happen.
Space has its own unique smell. So whenever a vehicle docks, or if guys are out doing a spacewalk, the smell of space when you open up the hatch is very distinct. It's kind of like a burning-metal smell, if you can imagine what that would smell like.
We would go in there with our parents once in a while for - actually go into Manhattan for dinner, weekends occasionally to a museum, but most of my memories of traveling into Manhattan was with the school trips and then later on as we got, you know, into high school, kind of on our own and with friends.
My career with the Navy and NASA gave me an incredible chance to showcase public service to which I am dedicated, and what we can accomplish on the big challenges of our day.
We have a lot of systems here on board the space station, and we can't call a repair man when one of them breaks.
Going to Mars is a bunch of baby steps, and it started off with the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin.
