Anne McClain

“Up in space we don't have a huge wardrobe.”

“I think that my career and perhaps me being on the International Space Station can really show women and girls and everybody that hey, we're not just sitting at the table, we're leading the table.”

“Risk is part of our jobs.”

“We're not up here visiting space, we're up here living in space.”

“The most uncomfortable thing about going to space is coming home. It's a little strange to get used to gravity again.”

“We're using the space station as a test bed for some of the technologies that are going to enable us to work autonomously in space and hit some of our deep-space exploration goals.”

“When you are finally in space and you're finally looking back at Earth and you realize for the first time in your life there's nothing standing between you and your dream, it's just so hard to describe the profound impact of that.”

“We humans were built for exploration, and we were built to do it together.”

“It's extremely humbling to look around the astronaut office, see how much experience there is, see how many lessons there are to learn and it's truly starting at square one.”

“I tell you what, if you live in Spokane, I hope you wake up every day and you're thankful for the weather, for the trees, for the colors, for the greenery, for cars that stop when you're running and you go to cross the road and they stop. I love it.”

“My heart would race when I went to Pacific Science Center because I would pretend to be an astronaut, and now I get to come back and give back to the community that I think compelled me to where I am.”

“With so much conflict in the world, space exploration can be a beacon of hope.”

“I remember riding the Space Needle and going up in the elevator and being scared, but thinking, 'This is going to be like going up a launch tower,' and so I would sit there and try to face that fear.”

“We have a great NASA support team that uplinks the nightly news. And if we have favorite TV shows or movies or sporting events, they can uplink those too. We also have access to the Internet just like we would on the ground. We have email. And we video-conference with our families about once a week. We feel pretty connected up here.”

“My favorite thing to see that I've been surprised at is watching the moon rises and moon sets that just move so fast it's like it jumps off of the horizon and up and over us.”

“The training flow for the space station is a year-and-a-half to two years.”

“Fifty years after humans landed on the moon for the first time, America has driven a golden spike on the trail to new space exploration feats through the work of our commercial partner SpaceX and all of the dedicated and talented flight controllers at NASA and our international partners.”

“The folks at NASA really look at the world and try to envision how things can be better.”

“Army astronauts have a very proud legacy in the astronaut program.”

“But every crew that makes it to orbit is lucky. Spaceflight's not easy.”