“The view of Earth is spectacular. The shuttle is pretty close to Earth. It only flies between 200 and 350 miles above Earth. So it's really pretty close. So we don't see the whole planet, like the astronauts who went to the moon did. So we can see much more detail. We can see cities during the day and at night, and we can watch rivers dump sediment into the ocean, and see hurricanes form. It's just a lot of fun and very interesting to look out the window. The other planets look pretty much like they do from Earth. The shuttle is so close to Earth that we're not much closer than you are when you're standing on Earth looking at the sky. So I saw many planets, and they looked just a little bit brighter than they do from Earth. They're like bright points of light.”