Helen Sharman
Helen Sharman
Dr Helen Patricia Sharman OBE FRSCis a British chemist who became the first British astronaut and the first woman to visit the Mir space station in 1991...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionAstronaut
Date of Birth30 May 1963
amazing feeling natural relaxing station
I still dream about being on the space station with the feeling of being weightless. The weightlessness is the most amazing, relaxing and natural feeling.
ahead became city learning life lived remote russian star trip year
I lived at Star City for more than a year ahead of my trip to Mir on May 18, 1991 in Soyuz TM-12. My life at Star City was so remote that learning Russian became my greatest priority.
blocked britain handful high human involved people standing
I get standing ovations at meetings when I say Britain should be involved in human spaceflight. Unfortunately, that goal has been blocked by a handful of people in high office.
although appears brick brilliant clouds deserts earth ireland looks red stand
From space, the earth appears predominantly blue; the clouds are brilliant white. Surprisingly, you don't see much green, although Ireland looks green, and so do Scandinavia and New Zealand. The deserts are brick red and really stand out.
clouds covered earth outside pacific protective rocket soon streaming sunlight view wonderful
During launch, the outside of the rocket is covered in a protective fairing, so we couldn't see outside, but as soon as that was jettisoned, my first view of the earth was over the Pacific Ocean, which was this wonderful deep blue, with clouds just over the top, and sunlight streaming in through the window.
atoms became began coming highly negatively positively
As the craft re-entered earth's atmosphere, it was coming in so fast, it heated up the surrounding atoms and molecules, and they became positively and negatively charged, and highly reactive, and began luminescing all around us.
amount ground money science
You can do more science on the ground than you can in space for the same amount of money. But there is some science you can not do on the ground.
cannot earth gain good science stuff understanding
There is good science you can do in space. There is stuff there you cannot do on Earth and we can gain understanding from it.
advice astronaut gets given sure tired window
The advice I was given was just to make sure you look out of the window occasionally. It's something no astronaut ever gets tired of doing.
asking fascinated gets interested motivates people science
People are fascinated by space flight. It makes them interested in science, gets them asking questions and motivates them.
people
It's very exciting that people could actually live on another planet.
I'm not going into infinity. I'm going into low earth orbit.
love
I'd love to go back to space, I don't know any astronaut who doesn't want to.
I would much rather fly on Soyuz than the shuttle.