Rebecca Morelle,Science Editorand
Alison Francis,Senior Science Journalist
Tony Jolliffe/ BBC News
From a very young age, Eileen Collins wanted to be an astronaut
She’s the astronaut who smashed through the glass ceiling. And kept on going.
Eileen Collins made history as the first woman to pilot and command a Nasa spacecraft – but despite her remarkable achievements, not everyone will know her name.
Now a feature-length documentary called Spacewoman, which chronicles her trailblazing career, looks set to change that.
We meet Collins at London’s Science Museum. She’s softly spoken, warm and very down to earth – but you quickly get a sense of her focus and determination. She clearly has inner steel.
“I was reading a magazine article on the Gemini astronauts. I was probably nine years old, and I thought that’s the coolest thing. That’s what I want to do,” she says.
“Of course, there were no women astronauts back then. But I just thought, I’ll be a lady astronaut.”
NASA
Nasa’s Space Shuttle programme flew for three decades
But that little girl set her sights even higher – she wanted to be at the controls of a spacecraft.
And the only way to achieve this was to join the military and become a test pilot.
In the Air Force, she stood out from the crowd and was selected to join the astronaut programme. She was to fly Space Shuttles – Nasa’s reusable “space planes”.
She knew the eyes of the world were on her when her first mission launched in 1995.
“As the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle, I worked very hard at that because I didn’t want people to say, ‘Oh look, the woman has made a mistake’. Because it wasn’t just about me, it was about the women to follow me,” she says.
“And I wanted there to be a reputation for women pilots that was: ‘Hey, they’re really good’.”
Eileen Collins
Eileen Collins with her young daughter Bridget
She was so good in fact that she was soon promoted to commander, in another first.
Collins was also a parent to two young children. The fact that she was a working wife and mother w
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