The pioneer who made history as the first woman to lead NASA

She’s the astronaut who shattered the glass ceiling. And it continued.

Eileen Collins made history as the first woman to pilot and pilot a spacecraft – but despite her remarkable achievements, not everyone will know her name.

Now, a feature-length documentary called Spacewoman, which chronicles her pioneering career, seems poised to change that.

We meet Collins at the Science Museum in London. She is softly spoken, warm, and very down to earth – but you sense her quick focus and determination. It clearly has internal steel.

“I was reading a magazine article about the Gemini astronauts,” she says. “I was probably nine years old, and I thought, ‘This is the coolest thing. This is what I want to do.’”

“Of course, there were no female astronauts at that time. But I just thought I would be an astronaut.”

But this little girl set her sights higher than that – she wanted to be in control of a spaceship.

The only way to achieve this was to join the army and become a test pilot.

In the Air Force, she stood out from the crowd and was selected to join the astronaut program. She had to fly space shuttles – NASA’s reusable “space planes.”

She knew the eyes of the world were on her when she launched her first mission in 1995.

“As the first woman to pilot the space shuttle, I put a lot of effort into it because I didn’t want people to say, ‘Look, the woman made a mistake.’ Because it wasn’t just about me, it was about the women who would follow me,” she says.

“And I wanted there to be a reputation for pilots, which is, ‘Hey, they’re really good.’”

She was so good in fact that she was soon promoted to captain elsewhere first.

Collins was also the father of two young children. The fact that she was a working wife and mother was brought up frequently in press conferences at the time, and some journalists seemed surprised that she could be both.

But Collins says being a mother and a leader are “the two best jobs in the world.”

“But I’ll tell you, it’s harder to be a mom than to be a space shuttle commander,” she laughs.

“The best training I ever had as a leader was being a father — because you have to learn how to say no to people.”

NASA’s space shuttles, which have flown for three decades, have reached dizzying heights, but they have also reached some dire lows.

In 1986, the Challenger spacecraft suffered a catastrophic failure seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members on board.

In 2003, the shuttle Columbia exploded in the sky of Texas at the end of its mission, also killing its seven-member crew.

A piece of insulating foam in the Columbia’s fuel tank broke off during launch, damaging the heat shield with devastating results.

Columbia was unable to withstand the fiery reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, and disintegrated as the world watched in horror.

Collins shakes her head at the memory of the disaster and the friends who lost their lives.

But because of her job as commander, she had to take charge, as she had to be in charge of the next shuttle flight.

Did you think about quitting at that point?

“Throughout the shuttle program people were counting on the commander to stick with it,” she says quietly.

“I think abandoning the mission would have been the opposite of courage…and I wanted to be a courageous leader. I wanted to be a confident leader. I wanted to instill that confidence in others.”

But when its mission finally took to the skies in 2005, the nightmare scenario played out again. A piece of foam broke during launch.

But this time, there was a plan to check the damage. But that meant performing one of the most dangerous maneuvers in space history.

Collins had to pilot the shuttle through a 360-degree flip while flying under the International Space Station. It allowed colleagues in the orbiting laboratory to photograph the underside of the vehicle and check whether the heat shield had been breached.

“There were engineers and managers saying it couldn’t be done, all of these reasons why it was too dangerous,” she says.

“I listened to the discussion, and they knew I was the leader, and I said, ‘Looks like we can do this.’”

With her hands steady on the controls, and her voice calm as she spoke to the control center, Collins steered the vehicle through a slow, graceful somersault. With the underside of the shuttle visible, the damage was quickly spotted, and a spacewalk was performed to repair it.

It meant that Collins and her crew would return home safely.

This was Collins’ last trip. She tells us she always planned to stop after her fourth mission — to give others a chance to go into space.

I have watched many astronauts follow in her footsteps. Does she have any advice for the next generation dreaming about the stars?

“Do your homework, listen to your teacher, pay attention in class and read books. This will give you something to focus on,” she says matter-of-factly.

Those who follow Collins into space will learn how much she has achieved, not only as a woman, but as a formidable pilot and leader.

She says she has no regrets about ending her astronaut career. She made her decision and didn’t look back. But there’s still a sad look in her eyes when we ask her if she’d be tempted if a seat on a spaceship became free.

“Yes, I’d like to go on a mission someday. When I’m an old lady, maybe I’ll get a chance to go back into space.”