- Hi, I'm Peggy Whitson, NASA astronaut. I've been working in the Space Program for 28 years, loving every minute of it. I typically say I've never had a real job, because I've always done what I wanted. As Chief of the Astronaut Office, I was in charge of selecting crews and making sure our crews were getting the proper training for the missions. At the time it included shuttle and station missions. But I think probably the most unique thing about being the first female Chief of the Astronaut Office was the fact that I was non-military. I think that was even a bigger step-function change, for folks to see a non-military person in charge of the Astronaut Office. When the first female astronauts were selected it was 1978, the year I graduated from high school. And I was really impressed with that. And it took my idea, my dream of wanting to be an astronaut, and made it realistic. I think they, from stories I've heard them tell, had to deal with a lot of hurdles. When I got there, by the time I got there much later, it wasn't until 1996 I was selected into the Astronaut Office, a lot of those hurdles had already been overcome. So I was lucky, they kind of trailblazed the way. And they had to deal with a lot more sexism than I ever did. I felt like when I got into the office, my job was to prove my value, prove my worth, prove my capability. And that's what I focused on. There was a transition time while I was in my initial phases in the Astronaut Office, when there weren't a lot of female spacewalkers. So I do think we were still changing at that time. Over my career, I ended up being able to do 10 spacewalks. I thought that was the best part.

- I am very proud today, because today is day in our space program, we will have the first woman command it.

- As the Commander, the prime responsibility is for safety of the crew and safety of the spaceship. The International Space Station is huge, and actually the ground team is helping us control it. Most of the days and nights when we're sleeping, they're in charge from the ground, of a lot of the details. So as the Commander on board, I was primarily responsible for coordinating with the ground to make sure that we've taken everything into consideration for our plan and our objectives. And just ensure that we are communicating effectively to get all our mission objectives done. Mission objectives during Expedition 16 were actually pretty sporty. In the sense that we had to take a module that was brought up by one space shuttle, and move it from its temporary location to its final location. Which involved doing spacewalks and using the robotic arm to move the structure around. And then doing spacewalks externally to do all the thermal line connections, the data connections, and the power connections to the new module. Which then enabled us to add two additional modules to the station. And each of these modules, just for your information, is about the size of a school bus. So they're all pretty large. And they're adding huge amounts of scientific capability to the Space Station. It was a very dynamic time period, and it was only a crew of three at that time. So it required a lot of teamwork and coordination with the ground. And because of that, I think it was a particularly satisfying time period.

- Thank you. I relieve you, Fyodor Nikolayevich, of command.

- There is only one Commander on the Space Station at a time. And it might be a Russian, it might be a European, it might be a Japanese, and it might be a US person. And the number of times that we have Commanders is all based on balance of contributions from the different space agencies. And those command slots are then allocated to each of those countries based on that contribution to the Space Station. Since the US provides a large percentage of the station, we get a large percentage of the command slots. I think that we have to always have our eye going further and deeper into space. I think that we can learn a lot from going to the moon. And it's a lot closer place to learn our lessons. Right now, we're learning a lot of lessons onboard the International Space Station about our life support systems, how are we gonna get to Mars. Right now using conventional engines, it'll be a nine-month trip. We have to be able to have life support systems that are gonna support our crews while they get there on that journey. They're gonna spend just over a year on the surface, and then they have to do that trip back. And so Space Station is our stepping stone to learn all those systems, to figure out how to fix the hardware. What hardware's gonna break, what maintenance items are we gonna have to take with us. All those things. We're also developing our closed-loop life support systems so that we don't have to take water, we'll recycle. Right now we're recycling almost 85% of the water onboard the Space Station. Which includes, not as fun to think about for some folks, but we also recycle our urine. We clean it up through a urine processing system, a water processing system. And make it into drinking water. So all these lessons, we're learning. Because we need them to go to Mars. Once we get to Mars, learning the lessons of habitats, on surfaces and dust. All those things we could learn by trial and error if we went to the moon first. So I think a combination of things that we're doing right now onboard the Space Station, testing out hardware and habitats on the moon, is then gonna allow us to be successful when we go to Mars. I do think it's a shame that we can't advertise what we do. Because most people don't know that we've had a human presence in orbit for 18 years. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We've had crews up on orbit. And I think that's impressive, you know. There's a lot of kids that have been alive their whole lives, and the station has been running that whole time. I do think that if we could advertise, that might be something that people would pay more attention to. But I also think it's very hard to make something that you do every day, all day, weeks on end, years on end, seem interesting. The press in general is interested when our toilet's broken, or something else major has happened and gone wrong. Because it's dramatic. And so it's hard to make the everyday parts of what we do really exciting. I do think we're doing some really phenomenal things up there. On this last mission I was on, I got to do some research looking at stem cell proliferation. I was studying growing lung cancer cells, and using antibodies that were specific to those lung cancer cells but had a drug attached to them. And they were attacking those lung cancer cells. And subjectively, underneath the microscope it looked like it was really working well. There's some really cool day-to-day stuff that we are doing on orbit. But it's hard to get folks interested in something that's been going on for 18 years. One question that I get asked frequently, but I think is a really good one, is what would you say to inspire young people? One is, find your passion. I think that's really important. You need to love what you're doing. The journey in life has to be fun for you. And then work to make it happen. Don't expect somebody to hand you the perfect job. Just because you dreamed about it, you actually have to work for it to make it real. And thirdly, I think part of my success has been to challenge myself to do things a little bit more outside of my comfort zone. Because I think you can find out you're capable of so much more than what you might even dream of.