The trailblazer who made history as Nasa’s first woman commander

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 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.

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.”

But that little girl set her sights even higher – she wanted to be at the controls of a spacecraft.

And the only way to achieve this was to join the military and become a test pilot.

In the Air Force, she stood out from the crowd and was selected to join the astronaut programme. She was to fly Space Shuttles – Nasa’s reusable “space planes”.

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

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

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

She was so good in fact that she was soon promoted to commander, in another space first.

Collins was also a parent to two young children. The fact that she was a working wife and mother was frequently brought up in press conferences at the time, with some journalists seemingly astonished that she could be both.

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

“But I’m going to tell you it is harder to be a parent than to be a space shuttle commander,” she 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 flew for three decades, reached breathtaking highs, but also some terrible lows.

In 1986, the Challenger spacecraft suffered a catastrophic failure seconds after launching, killing all seven crew members on board.

And in 2003, the Columbia shuttle broke up in the skies over Texas at the end of its mission, killing its crew of seven as well.

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

Columbia was unable to withstand the fiery re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, disintegrating as the world watched on in horror.

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

But with her job as commander, she had to pick up the mantle – she was to be in charge of the shuttle’s following flight.

Did she think about quitting at that point?

“People throughout the shuttle programme were counting on the commander to stick with it,” she says quietly.

“I think quitting the mission would have been 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 happened again. A chunk of foam broke away during launch.

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

Collins had to pilot the shuttle through a 360 degree flip while flying beneath the International Space Station. It allowed colleagues on the orbiting lab to photograph the craft’s underside and check if the heatshield 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: ‘It sounds like we can do it’.”

With her hands steady at the controls, her voice calm as she spoke to mission control, Collins piloted the craft through a slow, graceful somersault. With the shuttle’s underside now visible, the damage was quickly spotted – and a spacewalk was carried out to repair it.

It meant Collins and her crew would make it safely home.

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

And she’s watched plenty of astronauts follow in her footsteps. Does she have 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 in a matter-of-fact way.

Those who follow Collins to space will learn just how much she achieved, not only as a woman, but as a formidable pilot and commander.

She says she has no regrets 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 eye when we ask if she’d be tempted if a seat on a spacecraft became free.

“Yes, I would love to go on a mission someday. When I’m an old lady, maybe I’ll get a chance to go back in space.”

Spacewoman is in selected cinemas now.