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Meet the First Woman to Command a Space Shuttle Mission

Aired on 04/25/2000 | CC
Eileen Collins looked like your typical wife and mother, and those were the roles she cherished most, she said on a 2000 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. However, Eileen grew up with another passion: flying.

As a young girl, she read and dreamed about flying, and she followed up on her dreams. Eileen was one of the first women to go directly from college into the U.S. Air Force's pilot training program. In 1990, she was accepted into NASA's space program, and she spent years training as a pilot and astronaut. Her dreams paid off big when, in 1999, Eileen became the first woman ever to command a space shuttle mission.

Here, in this vintage clip, Eileen shares the two greatest thrills of being in space.