A pioneer who went down in history as the first NASA commander

She is an astronaut who broke through the glass ceiling. And continued on.

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

Now a feature-length documentary called Spacewoman, chronicling her pioneering career, will change that.

We meet Collins at the London Science Museum. She’s gentle, warm and very down-to-earth – but you quickly get a sense of her focus and determination. She obviously has internal steel.

“I read an article in the magazine about the Gemini astronauts. I was probably nine years old and I thought it was the coolest thing. It’s what I want to do,” she says.

“Of course, there were no female astronauts back then. But I just thought I was going to be a female astronaut.”

But that little girl had her sights set on even more – she wanted to be at the controls of a spaceship.

And the only way to achieve that was to join the army and become a test pilot.

In aviation, she stood out from the crowd and was selected to join the astronaut program. She was supposed to fly the Space Shuttles – NASA’s reusable “spaceplanes”.

She knew that the eyes of the world were on her when her first mission started in 1995.

“Being the first woman to pilot the Space Shuttle, I worked really hard on that because I didn’t want people to say, ‘Oh, look, a woman made a mistake.’ Because it wasn’t just about me, it was about women following me,” she says.

“And I wanted there to be a reputation for female pilots that was, ‘Hey, they’re really good.'”

In fact, she was so good that she was soon promoted to commander, first in another area.

Collins was also the parent of two young children. The fact that she was a busy wife and mother was often mentioned in press conferences at the time, and some reporters seemed amazed that she could be both.

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

“But I will tell you that being a parent is harder than being a space shuttle commander,” he laughs.

“The best training I ever had for being a commander was being a parent – because you have to learn how to say no to people.”

NASA’s Space Shuttles, which have flown for three decades, have reached breathtaking highs, but also some horrific lows.

In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger suffered a catastrophic failure seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members.

And in 2003, the shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the sky over Texas at the end of its mission, killing its seven-member crew.

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

Columbia could not survive its fiery re-entry into Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrating as the world watched in horror.

Collins shakes his head at the memory of the disaster and the friends whose lives were lost.

But in addition to her job as commander, she had a mantle to take up – she was to be in charge of the next shuttle flight.

Was she thinking about breaking up at that moment?

“Throughout the shuttle program, people counted on the commander to stick to it,” he says quietly.

“I think abandoning the mission would be the opposite of brave … and I wanted to be a brave leader. I wanted to be a confident leader. I wanted to instill that confidence in other people.”

But when her mission finally took to the skies in 2005, the nightmare scenario repeated itself. A piece of foam broke off during the launch.

This time, however, there was a plan to check the damage. But that meant undertaking one of the riskiest maneuvers in space history.

Collins had to steer the shuttle through a 360-degree turn as it flew beneath the International Space Station. This allowed colleagues from the orbiting lab to photograph the underside of the spacecraft and check if the heat shield had been breached.

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

I listened to the discussion, they knew I was the commander and I said, ‘Sounds like we can do it’.

Hands steady on the controls, voice calm as she spoke to mission control, Collins steered the craft through a slow, graceful somersault. With the underside of the shuttle now visible, the damage was quickly spotted – and a spacewalk was performed to repair it.

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

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

And she watched many astronauts follow in her footsteps. Any advice for the next generation dreaming of the stars?

“Do your homework, listen to your teacher, pay attention in class and read books, and that will give you something to focus on,” she says simply.

Those who follow Collins in space will learn how much she accomplished, not only as a woman, but also as an excellent pilot and commander.

She says that she has no regrets at all about bringing her astronaut career to an end. She made her decision and didn’t look back. But there’s still a wistful look in her eyes when we ask her if she’d be tempted if a seat on the spacecraft became available.

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