‘It’s harder to be a parent than a space shuttle commander’, trailblazing Nasa pilot tells BBC

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.”