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\h        Music.

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\h        JOAN HIGGINBOTHAM: I'm NASA astronaut Joan Higginbotham.

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\h        As a student, did you focus on science?

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\h        I always loved math and science, and I love kind of electronics.

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\h        I used to always putz around with the different things at home,

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\h        much to my parents' chagrin. So I guess without knowing it,

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\h        I really was kind of drawn to both of those subjects.

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\h        What were your ambitions growing up?

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\h        My thing was just, I wanted to become an electrical engineer and be just really good at my job,

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\h         and for people to think I'm very competent.

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\h        What brought you to NASA?

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\h        It was a fluke. I actually was going to work for IBM after college. I worked for them for several summers and,

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\h        unfortunately, they were not hiring engineers at the time. And long story short,

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\h        I got a call in my dorm room one night from a division chief here who had seen my

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\h        resume and thought I would be a good match, and offered me a choice of two positions in his division.

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\h        Who inspired you?

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\h        My biggest inspiration is from my family members. I have an incredible mom and dad and siblings who are very supportive,

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\h        and they were always an inspiration to me because they always encouraged me to do my best.

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\h        What's your most vivid spaceflight memory?

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\h        Probably my first sunrise. I was up in the commander's seat, matter of fact,

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\h        he had ordered me to come to the flight deck because my head had been in

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\h        Spacehab for a day and a half, and told me to sit down and look out the window and it was just the beginning of a sunrise.

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\h        And you just see the curvature of the Earth, and then you could see the sun just bursting forth and it was just a beautiful sight.

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\h        I was just enamored for a very long time.

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\h        Describe working with the robotic arms in space.

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\h        It was probably one of my tensest moments when I was up there,

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\h        because you have this huge piece of equipment on this

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\h        70-foot-long arm and it's worth billions of dollars.

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\h        And the only thing you're thinking in your mind is, don't let me hit anything.

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\h        And when we didn't have a payload on the end of it, we actually had one of the crew members,

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\h        and again, you have a precious life on the end of the arm,

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\h        so you're just tense the entire time and just very, very focused about what you're doing.

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\h        What's the best aspect about being an astronaut?

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\h        The best aspect is probably getting to meet a lot of different people and getting to go a lot of different places.

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\h        I've met incredible people, not only in the astronaut corps but just all over the world,

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\h        and that's probably one of the neatest things we get to do.

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\h        What misconceptions do people have about spaceflight?

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\h        I think everybody sees it as this great big, like, Disney World ride for us and it's this wonderful vacation,

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\h        and they really tend to forget that we are actually working really hard.

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\h        I mean, from the time we get up there and unstrap, to the time we come back,

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\h        we are just moving at a pretty good clip.

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\h        What do you like to do in your free time?

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\h        Shop. Shop. Work out, hang out with my girlfriends.

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\h        Try to spend time with my family as much as possible. Just do very human,very normal things.

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\h        If you weren't working for NASA, what job might you be doing?

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\h        I don't know. I've been in this career for 20 years now,