CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., June 14 (UPI) -- When shuttle Endeavour departs the International Space Station on Saturday, NASA will be leaving behind a rookie astronaut for the first time since the U.S. resumed long-duration space missions in partnership with Russia.
If Peggy Whitson has any trepidations about being left aboard the space station as the only American, the only woman and a first-time flier to boot, she is hiding them well. Rather than a hardship tour, Whitson considers the chance to live in space for four-and-a-half months a dream come true.
"I don't think I would have turned down anything, but my first choice was to fly on station," Whitson said before her launch. "I want to get up there, start doing science and help get the station constructed."
Whitson became enamored with the idea of flying in space when she was 9, watching Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon on the television in her rural Iowa home. After graduating from high school, she began angling her career toward NASA, with an eye on becoming an astronaut as well. Whitson focused on biology and chemistry at Iowa Wesleyan College, then moved to Houston to attend Rice University, earning a doctorate in biochemistry.
After graduation, she landed a research post and then a job with a NASA medical services contractor before joining the agency itself as a biochemist in 1989. Three years later, she was promoted to serve as the project scientist in the Shuttle-Mir program, the training ground for NASA's partnership with Russia in the International Space Station.
In 1996, Whitson was accepted into the astronaut corps after more than a decade of applications. "I'm glad I didn't know how hard it was going to be," she said in a preflight interview. "If I had, I might have become discouraged and quit."
Married to a NASA scientist and with no children, Whitson, 42, adapted easily to the rigors of multi-national training and travel. The most difficult part, she said, was learning Russian, and she is counting on her commander's fluency in English to help bridge any linguistic shortfalls.
"We end up mixing and matching languages," said Whitson, who is paired with veteran cosmonaut Valeri Korzun and rookie flier Sergei Treschev as crewmates aboard the International Space Station as the Fifth Expedition crew.
Whitson also is the first scientist to live on the station -- she is even a principal investigator on a biomedical experiment being conduct aboard the station -- and she plans to spend as much time as possible kick-starting the laboratory's nascent science operations.
"Every spare minute that I get, that I can, I will be doing investigations," she said.
An avid gardener, Whitson is looking forward to growing plants in orbit. She took pre-emptive measures to keep her flower garden alive at her Houston home by moving sprinkler heads closer to the plants. "Since my husband is going to be in charge, now maybe some of them will survive," she quipped.
The couple plans to stay in touch via e-mail and the station's telephone. Whitson plans to fill any spare time with geography lessons -- "I'll have the ideal viewpoint from which to learn," she said -- as well as books, music and movies.
One week into her mission, Whitson remained cheerful and optimistic about the prospect of being away from home until mid-October.
"I've wanted to do this for so long," she said during her first news conference one week after launch, "I just can't quite imagine not enjoying it."
