Lunar landing: Mary Louise Cleave

Mary Louise Cleave, 62, a former astronaut, was born in Southampton and graduated from Great Neck High School. Cleave earned degrees in biology, ecology and engineering before she joined NASA in 1980. She flew on two space shuttle flights in 1989 as a mission specialist and later became associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. She retired from NASA in 2007 and lives in Maryland.

"I was at summer camp up in Lake Champlain . . . . I was a counselor, working on the waterfront, teaching water skiing, sailing, guiding mountain trips. We had all the kids in to watch it on this teeny TV. It was up over the dining hall.

We all felt it was huge. . . . You could take the kids out and look at the moon at night. Everyone was just sort of blown away by this."

Still, she never thought she would one day end up in space herself. "Absolutely not. . . . I knew I didn't want to drive a desk, but I was two inches too short to be a stewardess. It never occurred to me that I could be a commercial pilot, even though I started flying lessons at age 14.

I was working on my PhD down at the Utah water research lab. . . . One of the researchers I working with said they were advertising for engineers to work in space. He said, "You're probably the only one crazy enough to want to do it."

I went down to the post office, found out about it and that you had to fly T-38s to be part of the program -- a high performance jet. That's what drove me. . . . I got hired in 1980, that was the second class of shuttle astronauts."