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She’s the astronaut who smashed through the glass ceiling. And kept on going.

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

Now a feature-length documentary called Spacewoman, which chronicles her trailblazing career, looks set to change that.

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We meet Collins at London’s Science Museum. She’s softly spoken, warm and very down to earth – but you quickly get a sense of her focus and determination. She clearly has inner steel.

“I was reading a magazine article on the Gemini astronauts. I was probably nine years old, and I thought that’s the coolest thing. That’s what I want to do,” she says.

“Of course, there were no women astronauts back then. But I just thought, I’ll be a lady astronaut.”