LINDA GODWIN -- FROM OAK RIDGE TO OUTER SPACE

It might be easy for astronaut Linda Godwin, who has flown two space flights and has a third planned for March, to forget her roots, but she hasn't.

Godwin, an Oak Ridge native who attended Jackson High School and did her undergraduate work at Southeast Missouri State University, still comes home whenever she can.

"Well, my parents still live there," Godwin said from the NASA astronaut office in Houston, where she serves as deputy chief. "I've got relatives there and I have a lot of ties there."

Godwin most recently came home for Christmas; of course to see her parents, who still live in Oak Ridge, but there was another reason: She wanted to get married at home.

"I went to school in Jackson and I felt it was important to get married there," Godwin said. She married Steven Nagel, a former astronaut who made four flights during his career and still works for NASA.

Godwin's parents, James and Maxine Godwin, say she comes home about four times a year, which is pretty extraordinary considering her hectic schedule.

"She grew up in Jackson," Maxine Godwin said. "Her friends are here and I guess she thinks a lot of her family."

Godwin tries to show appreciation to the community where she grew up. She is given the chance to take pieces of home with her when she goes into space and has done so every time. She usually opts for something from schools in the area.

"Well, we're allowed to fly a few things with us," Godwin said. "I've done it for Jackson, SEMO, Oak Ridge. I'm glad I get that opportunity."

This time she is taking a banner for Woodland School in Marble Hill to space. She decided on Marble Hill because she has a cousin who attends school there, Justin Mackey. Mackey, 12, says he really looks up to Godwin.

"Before she took some stuff up from my other cousins and this time is my turn," Mackey said.

Mackey says he is very interested in the space program and hopes to someday be an astronaut just like his cousin.

The Woodland School banner will blast off with Godwin and five other crew members on the shuttle Atlantis March 21 at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a nine-day mission.

Atlantis plans to dock with the Russian space station Mir, where it will drop off one of the crew members, who will join two Russians already in the station for five months.

Godwin will walk in space with another astronaut to attach scientific equipment to the space station's exterior.

"We're going to put these packages on the outside of the station that will detect what is on the station," Godwin said. "We hope this will give scientists a better idea of what the environment around the space station is like."

Godwin admits that odds for tragedy do go up a bit when she steps outside the ship.

"But we've had very good training for it," she said. "We've got back-up oxygen and we are thermally protected.

"I feel good about how that's going to go."

But living in space takes a little getting used to.

"Everything's floating and you have to know exactly where you want to go and the best way to get there," Godwin said.

There is a waste control system for when they go to the bathroom and no shower for cleaning up. They do use water and soap, which Godwin says is no easy task in zero gravity.

"It's like re-learning how to live," she said. "It's really unique."

She is only a couple of hundred miles above the earth and that keeps her looking out the window.

"If you look outside the window, you can watch the sun rise and set every 70 minutes," she said. "You can see lightning and city lights."

Godwin graduated from Jackson High School in 1970. She went on to receive a bachelor of science degree in mathematics and physics from Southeast in 1974. She earned her master's and doctoral degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1976 and 1980.

Her first flight was aboard the Atlantis in 1991. In 1994, she flew aboard the shuttle Endeavor. Godwin has worked for NASA since 1980, becoming an astronaut in 1986.