Washington - Even though she has never strutted down a runway in an evening gown or a bathing suit, Eileen Collins is known to many as "Miss Universe".
The 48-year-old US astronaut was Nasa's first female shuttle pilot and mission commander, and is set to make history again on July 13, when she will lead a seven-man crew onboard the first shuttle launched by the US space agency since the explosion of the Columbia shuttle in February 2003.
Collins doesn't face the task unprepared. In 1995, she piloted the Discovery space shuttle during a flight to the Russian space station MIR, and four years later she headed a shuttle mission aboard Columbia. She was also onboard Atlantis in 1997, when it docked onto MIR.
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This new undertaking doesn't scare her, Collins said in an interview, even though a day doesn't go by when she doesn't think of the Columbia crew members who perished.
| 'I have a fantastic crew' |
She knows that there are always risks involved in such missions, but she said it's important that the risks have been studied and understood. She said she is confident that everything humanly possible has been done to assure the crew's safety.
"No, I am not afraid," she said. "If it would be different, I would not belong here."
Collins knew from a very young age that she would belong in the skies. She grew up in Elmira, New York, a town with a significant flight history. For instance, the first national gliding contest was held in Elmira in 1930.
As a small girl, Collins was fascinated by gliders and later by the television show Star Trek, her mother said.
"As soon as she came back home from school, she threw her stuff in a corner and turned on the TV," Rose Marie Collins said.
| 'Nobody handed her anything' |
Collins's passion was also fuelled by books on the flight- pioneering Wright brothers. Starting at age 16, Collins took on small jobs and started saving. She worked in her local church, counting the donations left in the collection box, and at a pizza restaurant.
Three years later, she had saved up enough money to accomplish her dream of learning how to fly.
Collins said she was actually quite shy, but the call from the sky was stronger. When the US Air Force opened its doors to female pilots in 1978, the young woman applied and started her training as a military pilot.
Collins eventually became a flight teacher and also earned several university degrees in mathematics, economics and space systems management along the way.
In 1990, Nasa hired Collins as a member of the US Astronaut Corps.
Collins, who is married to a fellow pilot and has two children, has flown on 30 different aircraft and has clocked more than 6 820 flight hours, almost 540 of those in space.
Collins can hardly wait for the upcoming flight aboard Discovery.
"I have a fantastic crew," she recently said.
Her team described her as humble, despite all her achievements. Her parents agree.
"She is a very ordinary person, a down-to-earth individual. She is very thoughtful," her mother said. "Nobody handed her anything. Everything she is today, she's earned." - Sapa-dpa
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