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Stephanie Wilson knew the odds were against her. She'd already been turned down once by NASA in 1993, and her second application, three years later, was one of 2,500 received.

Still, she felt compelled to go for the dream she'd held ever since she was a 13-year-old gazing at the night sky over her small hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Her acceptance into the space program in 1996 was a dream come true. 

After a decade of training and ground experience, Stephanie launched into space on Independence Day 2006 along with 12 other NASA astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. A year later, Stephanie left Earth's atmosphere aboard a second mission to the International Space Station.

On both of these missions, Stephanie brought her expertise in robotic arm operations as well as her small allotment of personal affects—a few family photos and a small Bible—and her faith in the God who hung every star.

I visited Stephanie at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where she gave me a tour of a life-sized model of the shuttle and talked about space and God. (Watch a video of our tour here).

What's your favorite memory from space?

A couple days into my first mission, we flew over the southern tip of South Africa. Out the window we could see the noctilucent clouds—very tall, thin, wispy high-altitude clouds—and the view was almost like a dream.

How did seeing God's creation from that perspective affect you?

You can't see the borders between countries from that view—or the strife that can occur between nations.

Sounds peaceful.

It is. And the view reminds me we should be doing everything we can to live together in harmony. Also, seeing how thin the earth's atmosphere is helps me realize how fragile our world is. We need to do our best to preserve it for future generations.

Were you nervous on launch day?

Our crews train together for a year and spend a few hundred hours in simulators. So by launch day it's all pretty routine.

Is it ever really routine?

We are excited about accomplishing mission objectives we've been training hard toward for a year—and about playing our part in this huge space program.

What I do is risky, but ultimately I believe God is in control. Despite the unknown, I put my trust in him.

Did anything go awry during your two missions?

On my second flight, we had a problem. Part of our mission was to replace a solar array that provides electrical power to new laboratory modules on the International Space Station. Unfor-tunately, the solar array hung up on one of the guy wires and tore. 

What did you do?

We put a space walker on the end of the station's robotic arm and moved him to the damage site so he could stitch the solar array back together. I was one of the robotic arm operators, so it was my duty to get the space walker to the repair site safely.

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November/December 2008, Vol. 30, No. 6, Page 43

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